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CHARLES DARWIN AND OTHER 
ENGLISH THINKERS 



CHARLES DARWIN 

AND 

OTHER ENGLISH THINKERS 

WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR 
RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VALUE 

BY 

S. PARKES CADMAN 



A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS 

AND SCIENCES DURING THE 

AUTUMN OF 1910 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



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COPYRIGHT, 1911 
BY LTJTHER H. GARY 



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THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS 

[ W D • O ] 
NORWOOD • MASS • U • S • A 



©CI.A297S52 



TO 

MR. FRANK S. JONES 

OF BROOKLYN 

THIS BOOK, WHICH OWES MUCH TO HIS 

FRIENDSHIP AND INSPIRATION 

IS RESPECTFULLY 

DEDICATED 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2011 witii funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/cliarlesdarwinotli01cadm 



PREFACE 

THESE lectures were delivered under the 
auspices of The Brooklyn Institute of 
Arts and Sciences during the months of 
November and December, 1910. At the kindly 
suggestion of Professor Franklin W. Hooper, 
the Secretary of the Institute, they have been 
prepared for the press. While they remain 
substantially as they were given, they have been 
revised with the view of rendering them more 
serviceable to ministers and laymen alike. 
I shall feel abundantly rewarded if the volume 
stimulates the reader to further research con- 
cerning the men and the subjects with which 
it deals. 

It has not been an easy task faithfully to 
convey the exact meanings and points of differ- 
ence in the close reasoning of these scientific 
and philosophical writers ; hence I have thought 
it wise to allow them to speak for themselves 
whenever possible. It will probably be said 
that many facts of prime importance have been 
omitted, and some others misinterpreted. This 
is more than likely; and if so, I must be held 
wholly responsible for it. But I sincerely hope 
that I have been able to give a little direction 
in that path which leads to a more complete 
apprehension of the Truth. 

[vii] 



Preface 

I am profoundly convinced that science and 
philosophy and ethics, however they may 
appear on the surface, are the friends and not 
the foes of religion. And I believe that a new 
day has dawned for the Christian Church, in 
which she can fearlessly and yet reverently 
utilize their newer conceptions for the enrich- 
ment of her message to the generation she 
seeks to serve. It has not been my aim to 
write a constructive work along these lines, 
but simply to place in the most favorable 
light consistent with accuracy a group of 
thinkers whose teachings have been sometimes 
supposed to stand in irreconcilable contra- 
diction to the essential truths of Christianity. 

I take this opportunity to record my sincere 
thanks to my colleague in the pastorate of 
the Central Congregational Church, the Rev. 
William Muir Auld, whose wide knowledge of 
these subjects has been of great assistance to me. 
He has also favored me by reading the proofs 
and preparing the Index and Bibliography. 

S. Parkes C adman. 
Brooklyn, New York City. 



[ viii ] 



CONTENTS 

LECTURE I PAGE 

Charles Dabwin 1 

LECTURE II 
Thomas Henry Huxlet 45 

LECTURE III 
John Stuart Mill 89 

LECTURE IV 
James Mabtineau. Part I 141 

LECTURE V 
James Martineau. Part II 179 

LECTURE VI 
Matthew Arnold. Part I 207 

LECTURE Vn 

Matthew Arnold. Part II 239 

Bibliography 271 



ix] 



FIRST LECTURE 
CHARLES DARWIN 



"iei MrrLy therefore, who would arrive at a knowl- 
edge of nature, train his moral sense; let him act and 
conceive in accordance with the noble essence of his 
soul; and, as if of herself, nature will become open 
to him. Moral action is the great and only experi- 
ment in which all riddles of the most manifold 
appearance explain themselves." 

NOVALIS. 



DARWIN AND OTHER 

ENGLISH THINKERS 

I 

CHARLES DARWIN 

THE year 1809 was the annus mirabilis of 
the nineteenth century for both Europe and 
America. It witnessed the advent of Lincohi, 
Wendell Holmes, and Poe on this continent; on 
the other, of Gladstone, Tennyson, FitzGerald, 
Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Last, but not least, 
Charles Darwin was born in the ancient and 
historic town of Shrewsbury, England, on Feb- 
ruary the 12th of that remarkable year. The 
visitor to his birthplace cannot fail to be struck 
by the configuration of the town, standing as it 
does on the crest of a bold eminence encircled 
by the River Severn, and commanding a wide 
and varied view of the surrounding country. It 
is a quaint and beautiful borough, with winding 
lanes and narrow streets, cloistered retreats, 
half-timbered and Jacobean houses, and stately 
churches which cherish with a proud regret the 
days that are no more. In the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries "to go to town" meant for 
the gentry of the Midland shires to go to Shrews- 
bury. Its civic importance is still considerable, 
and the remains of the Castle with the venerable 
[3] 



Charles Darwin 

and flourishing Grammar School are links be- 
tween the past and the present. 

Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, the father of 
Charles, was the leading physician of the com- 
munity; a man of stalwart physique, noted for 
his professional skill and practical sagacity, and 
esteemed by rich and poor alike for the wisdom 
of his counsel and the helpfulness of his dis- 
position. His father, Erasmus Darwin, grand- 
father to Charles, was also a physician, well 
known as the author of Zobnomia, or The Laws 
of Organic Life (1794), a minor attempt to fol- 
low the lead of Lucretius in his De Natura Rerum. 
The production was marked by excessive gen- 
eralization and a tendency to indulge too freely 
in theoretical speculation. These features found 
a robust but more restrained expression in the 
works of his grandson. Darwin's mother was a 
daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, whose artistic 
achievements in pottery rank with those of 
Palissy. His maternal grandmother was one of a 
remarkable bevy of sisters — the Aliens of Cres- 
selly — of whom two married Wedgwoods; one, 
Sir James Mackintosh the philosopher; and 
another, Sismondi the historian. Darwin's 
aptitude for reflection, his patient fidelity, his 
absence of self-assertion, his magnanimity and 
sweetness of disposition, were in large measure 
inherited from his mother. 

The Darwin home, known as "The Mount," 
was built by his father in 1800, and stands on 
[4] 



Charles Darwin 

the high ground overlooking the town. It is a 
plain substantial mansion with terraced walks 
on the western front descending to the river. 
From its elevated position there is an unequaled 
prospect of the scene of the Battle of Shrews- 
bury, fought in 1403, and the dim blue hills of 
Wales beyond. In the distance are the gray, 
crumbling walls of Haughmond Abbey; and 
behind them the woods of Attingham, skirting 
the landscape with stretches of somber green. 
The Severn turns abruptly toward the south, 
and flows through one of the loveliest valleys 
of England, past the castellated rocks of 
Bridgnorth and the cathedral cities of Worces- 
ter and Gloucester, until it meets the tidal 
waters of the Bristol Channel. From below 
the house ascend the hoarse murmurs of the 
traffic of the town, the hum of busy marketers, 
and the chiming of bells from many steeples. 

When a child, Darwin was taken by his 
mother to the Unitarian chapel where Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge once held forth with Hazhtt 
as one of his hearers. From 1818 to 1825 he 
was a scholar of the Grammar School, a royal 
foundation of King Edward VI. He would 
frequently run the mile or more between his 
home and the school, praying Heaven's aid 
that he might arrive punctually. Possibly 
he stayed too long in the amateur laboratory 
he and his brother had fitted up in the garden 
tool-house, or tarried over his growing col- 
[5] 



Charles Darwin 

lections, which at first included seals and 
foreign coins, stones and minerals, and later 
beetles and other insects. When he was ten, 
he studied the pebbles in front of the hall 
door, and wondered how a glacial boulder of 
local fame had been deposited in a place near 
at hand. It is easy to understand how the 
narrow and pedantic system of education which 
then prevailed in English secondary schools 
repelled this shy and retiring lad of opposite 
tastes and predilections. The severely classical 
atmosphere was so uncongenial to his desire 
for natural pursuits that he was provoked 
into rebellion. Dr. Butler, then head master, 
and later bishop of Lichfield, referred to young 
Darwin in the most unappreciative terms, 
because he preferred to dabble in chemical 
experiments rather than conjugate Latin verbs 
and memorize Greek paradigms. One picture 
of his schooldays shows him curled up in an 
embrasured window of the Elizabethan building, 
reading Shakespeare by the hour. "Nothing," 
he confessed in later years, "could have been 
worse for the development of my mind than 
Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, 
nothing else being taught except a little ancient 
geography and history. The school as a means 
of education to me was simply a blank." ^ 

As he approached his majority he evinced a 
liking for field sports which unnecessarily dis- 

1 Darwin's iz/e and Letters (N. Y., 1893), Vol. I, p. 28. 
[6] 



Charles Darwin 

turbed his father; for after all it was at bottom 
a nature interest, just as were his long walks 
in the rural lanes of the vicinity. These were 
intercepted by his enrolment at Edinburgh 
University to prepare himself for the family 
vocation of physician and surgeon. Here he 
remained two years. Among his fellow stu- 
dents were his elder brother, Erasmus, and his 
friend Robert Grant, afterward professor of 
zoology in University College, London. He 
again followed his own course. Most of the 
lectures were to him "intolerably dull," — 
even geology, the science to which in after 
life he was deeply attached, was viewed with 
violent aversion. Indeed, he vowed that never 
again would he read a book on the subject. 
Biological research chiefly occupied his atten- 
tion, and it became increasingly evident that 
he had no liking for his father's intentions. 
Realizing this, the good Doctor made the ill- 
starred suggestion that he should enter Cam- 
bridge and qualify for Holy Orders. The 
project was entered upon; but as theology was 
more repugnant to him than medicine or the 
classics, it speedily came to grief. Neverthe- 
less his residence at Cambridge, though brief, 
secured for him the friendship of men of mark 
whose recognition encouraged him to have 
confidence in himself, and whose kindly sym- 
pathies stimulated his enthusiasm for the study 
of the general order of nature. Among these 
[7] 



Charles Darwin 

were Professor Henslow (the first man to take 
the measure of Darwin's great possibilities), Dr. 
William Whewell, Professor Ramsay, and his 
uncle Sir James Mackintosh. Darwin was 
known among the undergraduates as "the man 
who walks with Henslow."^ From this unusual 
circle of social and learned intercourse accrued 
the main benefits of his Cambridge period. 
Not that he shirked other work; he was tenth 
in the list of candidates of 1831 for the degree 
of Bachelor of Arts, he studied and enjoyed the 
arguments of Paley, and was fairly proficient 
in mathematics, while even in the despised 
classics he obtained tolerably good results. 
If Darwin's education did not give him a full 
mind, it certainly gave him an eagerness for 
unraveling complex subjects and the power 
of reasoning out his own conclusions. His 
scientific proclivities were accentuated by read- 
ing Baron Humboldt's Personal Narrative and 
Herschel's Introduction to the Study of Philoso- 
phy. These volumes stirred in him the ambi- 
tion to add "even the most humble contribution 
to the noble structure of natural science." ^ 
He was introduced to the eloquent and influ- 
ential Sedgwick, who persuaded him to revoke 
his hasty decision respecting the study of 
geology. Ultimately it became apparent that 
he was not entirely satisfied with the orthodox 
view of the earth's formation, and he did not 

^ Darwin's Life and Letters, p. 44. ^ J^id,^ p. 47, 

[8] 



Charles Darwin 

hesitate to oppose some conclusions Sedgwick 
entertained. Their tour in North Wales for 
the purpose of examining certain strata led to 
an amiable but decided difference of opinion 
as to the validity of the current method of 
geological interpretation. At the conclusion 
of their investigation he found awaiting him 
an offer to join the Beagle, due to the friendly 
interest of Henslow, and which combined recrea- 
tion with suitable work. From the moment he 
accepted it, his personal achievements became 
a necessary and important part of the history 
of mankind. 

The voyage of the Beagle, now a familiar 
story, was by far the most important event 
in Darwin's career. It set the seal upon the 
nature of his life-work, and molded his mental 
gifts for the onerous tasks that awaited them. 
The first genuine discipline of his mind was 
due to his enforced solitude and detachment on 
board ship, necessitating steady industry and 
concentrated attention — habits which, though 
tardily acquired, served him well and made pos- 
sible the marvelous results he afterward ob- 
tained. On his return home his father viewed 
with astonishment the changes wrought in him, 
and excitedly exclaimed, "Even the shape of 
his head has altered!" 

The official record of the cruise, entitled 
The Journal of a Naturalises Voyage Round 

[9] 



Charles Darwin 

the World, appeared in 1839, and was respect- 
fully dedicated to Sir Charles Lyell. Darwin 
was always conscious of his indebtedness to 
this distinguished thinker, and throughout their 
long and intimate intercourse he subscribed 
himself as Lyell's "affectionate pupil." "I 
always feel as if my books came half out of 
Lyell's brain," he says, "and that I never 
acknowledge this sufficiently."^ Henslow had 
placed a copy of the first volume of Lyell's 
Principles of Geology in Darwin's hands when 
he embarked on the Beagle, with the warning 
that, while he should by all means read it, he 
should pay no attention to its wild theories and 
conclusions . The young naturalist, however, was 
rapidly becoming a self-reliant student, and 
now and afterward Lyell's works and their 
far-reaching implications altered the whole 
tone of his thinking. They so strongly in- 
fluenced his own conclusions that but for their 
inspiration the Origin of Species might never 
have been written. In 1845 he again addressed 
himself in a letter to his master, "I have long 
wished, not so much for your sake as for my 
own feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more 
plainly than by mere reference how much, geo- 
logically, I owe you. Those authors, however, 
who, like you, educate people's minds as well 
as teach them special facts, can never, I should 
think, have full justice done them except by 

^ More Letters of Darwin, p. 117. 
[10] 



Charles Darwin 

posterity; for the mind thus insensibly im- 
proved hardly perceives its own upward ascent." 
The Journal met with high consideration from 
the first; men of learning, in both Europe and 
America, accorded it their hearty praise as a 
unique record of travel and research. The 
Quarterly Review,^ the magazine of scientific 
progress, dealt at length with its observations 
and declared they contained valuable material 
for constructive thought. The style was simple, 
yet vivid; the descriptions were those of a devo- 
tee who scrutinized every curious phenomenon; 
the facts, many being entirely new, were all care- 
fully detailed. While possessing the romantic 
interest attached to an excursion in hitherto 
unknown fields, the volume has been conspicuous 
for its impressiveness and intellectual integrity. 
Darwin did not, as many have supposed, 
discover the doctrine of evolution. Nor was 
he by any means the first exponent of the 
origin of species, or of the notion that species 
became changed in the course of time. The con- 
ception of biological development prevailed long 
before his day. It was known to the classical 
writers, and persisted more or less throughout 
the periods following on the progress of Human- 
ism and the Revival of Learning. Among mod- 
erns, Goethe, De Candolle the Elder, Lamarck, 
Buffon, and Chambers had foreshadowed some 
of the conceptions that Darwin's discoveries 

1 Vol. LXV, p. 224. 
[11] 



Charles Darwin 

afterward placed on a sound basis. An eminent 
authority. Professor Judd, relates an amusing 
conversation he had with Matthew Arnold 
in 1871. "I cannot understand," said Arnold, 
"why you scientific people make such a fuss 
about Darwin. It's all in Lucretius." To 
which J.udd replied, "Yes, Lucretius guessed 
what Darwin proved." Whereupon Arnold 
rejoined, "Ah! that only shows how much 
greater Lucretius really was, for he divined a 
truth which Darwin spent a life of labor in 
groping for." ^ The author of Culture and 
Anarchy underestimated the real worth of 
Darwin, not only in placing a poet's intuition 
over against a scientist's discovery, but in 
failing to appreciate the herculean toil of more 
than thirty years devoted to the application 
and illustration of a thesis which many had 
surmised yet could not demonstrate. 

Previous to his time there had been constant 
discussions among men of science as to the 
possibility of substantiating the prevailing 
views regarding the immutability of species. 
Students were tempted to exclaim concern- 
ing Mosaists and evolutionists, "A plague on 
both your houses!" Debates were endless 
and fruitless; the theological thought of the 
day, which was also the thought of many 
scientists, stood directly in the path of investi- 
gation. Geological formations were attributed 

^ Coming of Evolution, pp. 3-4. 

[12] 



Charles Darwin 

to a series of cataclysms of which the Deluge 
was the last and most important. With each 
of these catastrophes all Hving creation was 
completely destroyed and the planet retenanted 
by an act of special and direct creation. This 
position was meant to conform with the biblical 
narratives, and seemed to clinch the claim for 
their divine inspiration. The fatal objection, 
however, was the lack of uniformity and con- 
tinuity, which unprejudiced men felt were 
essential to any true interpretation of the 
natural order. Violent interferences and new 
creative acts were, in their opinion, poor sub- 
stitutes for the reign of law, and there was 
a growing tendency among the "Uniformita- 
rians," as they were called, to seek the method of 
divine operation in something more stable and 
capable of rational explanation. But the ab- 
sence of a determinative principle dealing with 
the evidence on the crucial point bewildered 
these advocates. They were silenced in the 
presence of a mystery which both attracted 
and repelled them. 

Darwin's attempt at solution was not a 
conscious effort. When he excavated the fossil 
remains of animals from the South American 
pampas, he saw how closely they resembled 
their living progenies around him, and grave 
doubts touching the accuracy of the catas- 
trophic theory flitted through his mind. The 
same striking correspondences existed else- 
[131 



Charles D arwi 



n 



where, and he began to grope for an adequate 
explanation of these strange analogies. TMiile 
on the Beagle the task of collecting and describ- 
ing specimens consumed his time and prevented 
his theorizings from reaching maturity. After 
his return home he spent some years in arrang- 
ing these facts according to the best known 
systems of classification. Even when this was 
done he hesitated long before arriving at the 
most tentative conclusions. Yet the saliency of 
his ordered materials was such that he began 
to drift from the moorings of traditional opinion. 
In this dissatisfied state of mind he chanced 
to read for relaxation Malthus's Essay on the 
Principle of Population. The immense struggle 
for existence with which it deals had already 
painfully impressed Darwin. Malthus's main 
argument was that nature has self-restraint, and 
when life increases beyond the proper means 
of subsistence competition ensues, the weak go 
to the wall, and the strong are established. It 
instantly occurred to Darwin that a similar 
principle operated in the organic world, result- 
ing in the formation of new species, and these 
preventive checks would also account for 
the destruction of unfavorable variations. In 
this association between the struggle waged 
by individual types and the succession and 
disappearance of species, we have the key to 
Darwin's interpretation of evolution. The 
germinal idea of his theory flashed upon him 
[14] 



Charles Darwin 

with the suddenness of intuition. Plato's 
plea that such intuition is the highest form of 
reasoning — and such it is since it depends on 
previous and thorough preparation — has sel- 
dom received better support. 

Always cautious and critical, Darwin was 
still anxious to avoid precipitate action. He 
did not commit his theory to writing until 
1842, when he prepared a brief abstract of 
thirty-five pages, which he expanded during 
the summer of 1844 to two hundred and thirty 
pages, and finally published in 1859, after an 
interval of seventeen years. He was repeatedly 
admonished by his brother Erasmus, Sir Charles 
Lyell, and others, that some one would forestall 
him; but he persevered in his reticence, until 
their fears were realized. Mr. Alfred Russel 
Wallace, a young traveler and naturalist, sent 
him an essay on The Tendency of Varieties to 
Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, which 
Darwin saw at a glance contained the gist of 
his own theory. In the spring of 1858 Wallace 
lay sick with fever at Ternate in the island of 
Celebes. In lucid intervals his thoughts re- 
curred to the ever-present problem of species; 
and the writings of Malthus, which he had read 
twelve years before, suggested to him, as they 
had to Darwin, the theory of natural selection. 
As soon as he was able, he sketched an outline 
and forwarded it to Darwin by the next mail. 
It was a singularly clear and comprehensive 
[151 



Charles Darwin 

presentment of the hypothesis now known to 
both, and he accompanied it with the unwit- 
tingly naive suggestion that he beheved it to 
be entirely original. Darwin was struck as 
with "a bolt from the blue." Distracted by 
domestic affliction, and himself a sufferer from 
precarious health, he T\Tote at once to his 
confidant, Sir Charles Lyell, enclosing Wallace's 
document with the comment, "I never saw a 
more striking coincidence; if Wallace had had 
my manuscript written out in 1842 he could not 
have made a better short abstract. ... So all 
my originality, whatever it may amount to, will 
be smashed, though my book, if it ever have 
any value, will not be deteriorated, as all the 
labor consists in the application of the theory."^ 
Grave issues were at stake. The merit of 
enunciating an illuminating principle was about 
to be assigned. Any personal bickerings regard- 
ing priority might have engendered animosity 
such as that which, in 1846, threatened to arise 
between Adams and Leverrier with reference 
to the discovery of Neptune. W^allace had 
anticipated Darwin in writing, as Darwin had 
anticipated Wallace in conceiving and amplify- 
ing the main features of the principle. This was 
an unfortunate complication which had in it 
the seeds of acrimony. But it was handled with 
mutual forbearance and consummate justice. 
There has never been a more chivalrous rivalry 

1 Darwin's Life and Letters (N. Y., 1893), Vol. I, p. 473. 
fl6l 



Charles D arioin 

than this which arose so inadvertently for 
Wallace, so unexpectedly for Darwin. The 
conduct of the interested parties was unim- 
peachable, and reflected credit on them and 
their supporters. Their papers were read to- 
gether at a special meeting of the Linnsean 
Society on July 1, 1858. The absent Wallace 
entirely acquiesced in the decision of the council, 
which awarded the precedence to Darwin. As 
proof of this, his letter to IMr. George Silk may 
be quoted: "I have read the Origin of Species 
through five or six times, each time with in- 
creasing admiration. It will live as long as the 
Principia of Newton. IVIr. Darwin has given 
the world a new science, and his name should 
in my opinion stand above that of every philoso- 
pher of ancient or modern times." ^ Fifty 
years later he reiterated his earlier praise in a 
memorial address he delivered on July 1, 1908, 
and protested against the honor which he 
believed had been too freely accorded to him. 
"I was then (as often since) 'the young man 
in a hurry'; he, the painstaking and patient 
student, seeking ever the full demonstration 
of the truth he had discovered, rather than to 
achieve immediate personal fame. ... It was 
really a singular piece of good luck that gave 
me any share whatever . . . [or] allowed me 
to come in, as a very bad second, in the truly 
Olympian race in which all philosophical biol- 

1 Wallace's My Life, Vol. I, p. 372. 
U71 



Charles Darwin 

ogists were more or less actively engaged." ^ 
The force of admiration cannot go farther. 
Whatever doubts may exist as to the justice 
of the estimate — and Wallace would appear 
to depreciate unduly his own share in the 
achievement — there can be none as to its gen- 
erosity. No nobler example of self-abnegation 
adorns the history of science or philosophy. 

Ill 

While it is impossible within the limits of a 
single lecture to give an extended exposition 
of the Darwinian theory, its main outline, and 
the revolution it wrought in the scientific 
world, can be briefly stated. Huxley's in- 
cisive putting of the evolutionary thesis has 
no superior for completeness and lucidity. 
"All species have been produced by the develop- 
ment of varieties from common stocks; by 
the conversion of these, first into permanent 
races and then into new species, by the process 
of natural selection, which process is essentially 
identical with that artificial selection by which 
man has originated the races of domestic 
animals — the struggle for existence taking the 
place of man, and exerting, in the case of 
natural selection, that selective action which 
he performs in artificial selection." - 

This theory involved an amazing transition, 

^ Fifty Years of Darwinism., pp. 19-20. 

2 Huxley's Collected Essays: Darwiniana, p. 71, 

[181 



Charles Darwin 

which was indicated both by Darwin's solemn 
declaration concerning it and the controversies 
it aroused. He had been at infinite pains, 
by repeated tests and experiments, to verify 
every conclusion he advanced. He admitted 
that much was obscure and would long remain 
obscure, but his statement on the issue was 
couched in terms that preclude any misgiving 
as to the depth and sincerity of his conviction. 
*'I can entertain no doubt, after the most 
deliberate and dispassionate judgment of which 
I am capable, that the view which most natu- 
ralists until recently entertained, and which 
I formerly entertained — namely, that each 
species has been independently created — is 
erroneous. I am fully convinced that species 
are not immutable; but that those belonging 
to what are called the same genera are lineal 
descendants of some other and generally 
extinct species, in the same manner as the 
acknowledged varieties of any one species 
are the descendants of that species. Further- 
more, I am convinced that natural selection 
has been the most important, but not the 
exclusive, means of modification." ^ 

Darwin held that in nature there was an 
inherent and self-acting power which produced 
the absence of trees in Southern Continental 
America, the adaptation of animals to their 
environment, and also that of the smaller species 

^ Introduction to Origin of Species (London, 1902), p. 6. 
[19] 



Charles Darwin 

abounding in the regions formerly occupied by 
their huge and extinct ancestors. Thus he ac- 
counted for differences in breed, and the coming 
in of the new and the going out of the old types, 
which had hitherto been the insoluble problems 
of animate creation. The central idea of the 
Origin of Species is that every form of organic 
life, high and low, is derived from a very small 
number of original forms. Every variety of 
vegetable and animal organism, now extant, 
or having formerly existed, owes its origin to 
the slow and gradual operation of the modifying 
influences of local and special causes trans- 
mitted by heredity. Whatever forms were 
best suited to any particular time and locality 
were selected and adapted by the working of 
natural laws. Many illustrations of the work- 
ing of these laws are to be found in Darwin's 
pages. His patience and care in arranging 
and explaining with exactitude a multitude of 
facts, his candor in modifying and retracting 
hasty or incorrect inferences, his unfailing in- 
tellectual poise when surrounded by difficulties, 
were marks in him of the true scientific spirit, 
"the spirit in which to acquire lessons from 
nature, whether in the world of mind or in 
the world of matter." ^ 

The reception which Darwin's first volume 
received from the scientific community has 
been mentioned. It is now in place to speak 

^ Cf. John Fiske's Darwinism and Other Essays, p. 35. 
[20] 



Charles Darwin 

in some detail of the hostility it excited, how 
this arose, and what it contained. The preva- 
lent views of creation were based either on 
Moses or on Milton. If an orthodox naturalist 
of the pre-Darwinian epoch had been required 
to give a satisfactory account of the immense 
number of varieties of organic life, probably 
he would have taken refuge in the doctrine 
of immediate creation as authorized by the 
common interpretation of the Book of Genesis. 
Even those who admitted evolution as a 
possible alternative, as did the Huttonian 
School, were completely in the dark concern- 
ing the modus operandi. The intelligent people 
who were not scientists had no concern with 
these difficulties. They did not even know 
of their existence. For them the conceptions 
of the past ages as embodied in Milton's poetry 
were all-sufficient, and the adaptation of the 
creation epic in Paradise Lost gave permanence 
and dignity to the "revealed" truth of Hebrew 
tradition. Curiously enough this was the 
only poetry Darwin read while on the Beagle. 
At the moment when he first questioned the 
doctrine of direct creation, the familiar lines 
in which it is so tersely described were before 
his eye: 

"The eartli obey'd, and straight 
Op'ning her fertile womb teem'd at a birth 
Innumerous Hving creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb'd and full grown. Out of the ground up rose 
As from his lair the wild beast, where he wonns 

[21] 



Charles Darwin 

In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den; 
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walk'd; 
The cattle in the fields and meadows green: 
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks 
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung. 
The grassy clods now calved; now half appear'd 
The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds. 
And rampant shakes his brinded mane." ^ 

An indication of the hold this glowing im- 
agery had on the imagination of all classes is 
found in the preference of Professor Agassiz, 
the foremost American scientist of his day, for 
Milton's presentation over Darwin's theory, 
and his assertion that not only was each species 
specially created, but created in the proportions 
and the locality in which it was found to exist. 
Old controversies were renewed and new ones 
generated around these opposing theories. 
The significance of Darwin's contribution 
aroused a regrettable acerbity. The insularity 
of English life had conserved its prejudices, 
and these in turn gave birth to some pronounced 
tendencies in radical directions. The reaction- 
aries practically controlled science and the- 
ology; anything that savored of liberalism 
was strongly denounced, and its manifestoes 
were either repudiated or treated with ridicule 
and misrepresentation. The Universities were 
under the sway of the Anglican Church, which 
was then well on into the first phase of the 

• Milton's Paradise Lost, Book VII, lines 453-466. 
[22] 



Charles Darwin 

Oxford Movement; scientific professorships 
were held by clergymen, and Cuvier's theories 
of "world catastrophes" and the immutability 
of species were cordially received because 
they afforded a supposedly scientific basis 
for the Mosaic account of the Flood. Dr. 
Buckland, a prominent and energetic scientist 
of the clerical order, uncompromisingly asserted 
that all scientific teaching must be forever 
subordinated to the cosmogony of Genesis. 

In the heat of fervid disputation men forgot 
that Darwin was a specialist in his own depart- 
ment of science; they ignored the expert skill 
and tempered judgment of his discussion; and 
they did not allow for his own admission that 
many things would long remain obscure. His 
assumptions were as well known to him as 
they were to his critics. He was fully aware 
that he began with them and depended on 
them. If he were allowed to premise a world 
and in it a first or a few created forms, in a 
suitable environment, and with certain capaci- 
ties, he would show how that world was tenanted 
with living beings. These were tremendous 
assumptions, and his deductions from them 
aroused a storm which at one time rose so 
high that it seemed as though his voice would 
be lost in the clamor and he would not obtain 
a hearing. The opposition was purer in motive 
than in practise. Many scientists and the- 
ologians were chiefly anxious to conserve 
[23] 



Ch arles Darwin 

the spiritual principles which for them were 
inextricably woven into the dogma of direct 
creation. Natural Selection appalled them as 
a dangerous novelty which threatened to sub- 
stitute mere physical force for the operative 
and beneficent wisdom of God. Sentiment 
lent its powerful aid to their forebodings. It 
was exceedingly hard for them to throw away 
the old wine-skins, and the strength of their 
religious convictions was against such a stroke 
of temerity. 

Nor can it be said that their protestations 
were groundless. Questions that demanded 
the most careful handling suffered from the 
recklessness of those materialistic evolutionists 
who entered into the new teaching with 
such ardor that they overran all boundaries. 
Haeckel, Buchner, and Clodd were the promi- 
nent representatives of this school. They were 
unwilling to admit that evolution could be 
thwarted by ultimate origins; it was so abso- 
lute that if it did not account for everything it 
accounted for nothing. Granted "a fortuitous 
concourse of atoms" as a beginning, the theory 
needed no assistance and left no gaps between 
those atoms and man himself. The idea of a 
directing Creator was a figment of the brain, 
and matter in motion the all in all. This un- 
warranted extension of Darwinism was really a 
decaying philosophy which used the evolution 
theory as a mold in which to recast its worn-out 
[24] 



Charles Darwin 

conceptions. Darwin lent no direct encourage- 
ment to such spurious notions, and it would 
be unjust to charge their raw rationalizing and 
philosophical improprieties against him. Every 
notable man has to run the risk incurred by the 
vagaries of his disciples, and to them must be 
assigned much of the persistency of the later 
opposition to Darwin's theory. Materialistic 
evolutionists felt confident that by reducing 
everything to their mechanical system they 
could eventually conduct the Deity to the verge, 
and, in the language of Comte, "bow Him out 
with thanks for His provisional services." 

Another source of confusion was that which 
arose out of the use of terms, a confusion fre- 
quently more mischievous than actual error. 
The controversialists failed to remember that 
terms like "force" and "cause" were employed 
metaphorically and not metaphysically — that 
is to say, with no direct reference to ultimate 
origins. All truth is relative, and so vital a 
theory as evolution was found to have many 
far-reaching consequences ; but specifically con- 
sidered, it is no more than a description of the 
Creator's methods of creation. "Material 
phenomena, so called, are not material at all; 
they are the expressions for complicated psychi- 
cal states." Extremists on both sides neglected 
these important qualifications, while some were 
malicious and kindled their fires not so much for 
the radiance as for the smoke they would diffuse. 
[25] 



Charles D arwi 



n 



It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon 
Nietzsche's doctrine of the Superman — a 
wild and atrocious alienation of the Darwinian 
hypothesis which subverts the moral order — 
for we do not achieve true moral progress by 
surrendering to a struggle for existence, but by 
combating and finally abolishing it. Nietzsche 
was a severe critic of Darwin, and he argued 
against him on behalf of "an inner creative 
will in living organisms which ultimately 
makes environment and natural conditions 
subservient and subject." ^ In this sense 
the German philosopher is on "the side of the 
angels"; but his bitter attack on Christian 
morality, and his anxiety to produce a society 
by means of an unregulated struggle for power 
in which might is the only right, constituted 
him a prophet who was born thousands of 
years behind his time. His favorite conception 
of life, in Beyond Good and Evil (p. 226), is 
really a plea for rampant cruelty, and his 
favorite moral conception is that of a filibuster. 

In the theological realm writers emphasized 
the miraculous interferences manifested in 
direct creation, and clung tenaciously to the 
doctrine of the immutability of species. A 
universe produced and maintained by natural 
laws was for them hard of belief. Guidance 
and purpose seemed to have disappeared from 
the creative scheme. The Hebrew Scriptures 

* A. M. Ludovici's, Nietzsche, His Life and Works, pp. 69-70. 
[26] 



Charles Darwin 

fostered credence in a special creative provi- 
dence, and Christian people generally were 
wont to regard unusual expressions of divine 
power as alone worthy of God. If no such 
interruptions occurred, they hastily assumed 
that the scheme must be self-originating, self- 
sustained, and moving blindly to no end. But 
to presume that whatever happens in natural 
order is to no purpose is not reasonable. It 
has been pertinently observed that "if an 
event represents a divine purpose, it is as truly 
purposeful when realized through natural means 
as it would be if produced by fiat."^ To say 
God created everything, and to leave the matter 
there, counts for nothing, save as evidence of 
a desire to deprecate inquiry and fortify tra- 
dition in a monastic seclusion of the mind. 
Intellectual peace purchased at the price of 
strangled thought is a delusion and a snare. 
No one can for long escape the vibrant move- 
ments of the times by refusing to deal with the 
inevitable results of advancing knowledge. If 
he can, and if he does, it is only the postpone- 
ment of a battle which becomes the more 
disastrous for him the longer it is delayed. 
The sole function of science is to address itself 
to the questions springing out of the manifold 
activities of the visible universe ; and if, in its 
attempts to answer these, there is a breach of 
intellectual harmony, it can be healed only 

^ B. P. Bowne's Immanence of God, Chap. I, p. 13. 

[27] 



Charles Darwin 

by a steady conformity to the authority of 
truth, and an unwavering faith in its ultimate 
right to prevail. Nor should it be forgotten 
that evolution, natural selection, and kindred 
terms describe a process for which they do 
not and cannot account. As a mode of opera- 
tion that process is the best yet disclosed; 
but as a doctrine of mechanical causality it is 
altogether impossible. 

The late Professor Borden P. Bowne con- 
fronted the issue in a manner at once coura- 
geous and scholarly. From the first, he took 
the position that evolution as a theory of causes 
is worthless, as a theory of the order of progress 
it is harmless. He had profound respect for 
Darwin as a scientist, but he carefully distin- 
guished between the description and formula- 
tion which science gives and the causal and 
purposive interpretation which philosophy and 
theology seek. When this distinction is observed 
— and it is the distinction between a process on 
the one hand and its origin and aim on the 
other — confusion ceases to exist. Darwin had 
no marked gifts for metaphysics. His mind 
was essentially analytical, and tended toward 
the minute observation of separate organisms. 
Beyond framing hypotheses for facts he did 
not care to go, considering it outside his prov- 
ince to speculate on the origin of life or matter. 
He refused to venture into regions requiring 
methods of investigation with which he was 
[28] 



Charles Darwin 

not familiar. Fully aware of the splendor 
of this theory of life which he advocated, a 
splendor that came into mental view during 
moments of calm contemplation, he expatiated 
on the several powers of sentient existence, 
and how these had been originally breathed 
by the Creator into a few forms, or even only 
one. While the planet had pursued its ageless 
cycles, according to the fixed law of gravity, 
endless species of beauty and wonder were 
continually being evolved from so simple a 
beginning. Lyell, so far back as 1836, writing 
to his friend. Sir John Herschel, who shared 
his belief in the derivation of new species from 
preexisting ones by the action of secondary 
causes, asserted that the conception appealed 
to him as "the grandest he had ever known 
so far as regards the attributes of the Presiding 
Mind." 1 

There is nothing in evolution derogatory 
to the Eternal Being or His designs when 
thus considered. On the contrary, there is 
much to be gained by a frank admission of 
the majesty and lawfulness contained in this 
exposition of the Creator's handiwork. And 
when it is clearly understood, and the fatal 
obstacles of ignorance and misapprehension 
have been removed, it will contribute increas- 
ingly to the honor and glory of God. Modern 
science has carried the idea of uniformity into 

^ Lyell's Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 468. 

[29] 



Charles Darwin 

every realm of the universe. In this sense 
it is the special illumination of our age, and 
after fifty years the mists of misunderstand- 
ing are being scattered, while the proportion 
and value of conflicting claims are more quickly 
discerned. When Weismann said that the 
wonderful results of evolution were brought 
about as though they were guided by a supreme 
intelligence, he spoke better than he knew. 
Theologians and men of faith need no longer 
be afraid of science. They can accept the 
reign of law, and they can rejoice in it. It is 
confirmatory in many ways of the greatest 
and most distinctively Christian ideas they can 
entertain concerning the workmanship of the 
All-wise God. 

When Darwin published the Origin, he had 
already accomplished enough original research 
to place him in the front rank of scientific 
investigators. The equally well-known volume 
on The Descent of Man was not issued until 
1871, though the interval between the two 
treatises was filled with prodigious labor. He 
had purposely refrained from discussing the 
place man held in his system, because he was 
anxious to avoid needless friction, and felt that 
Nothing was to be gained from an unsym- 
pathetic disregard for the religious suscepti- 
bilities involved in the theme. He was the 
most courteous of men, and he showed it by 
[30] 



Charles Darwin 

his efforts to avoid any outrage of these devout 
feehngs. At the same time he was equally 
honest, and in the Origin he had hinted that 
light would be thrown on the beginnings and 
history of man. But he believed that it was 
useless and injurious to parade his convictions 
prematurely or without offering convincing 
evidence for their support. The Descent of Man 
excited more interest and less opposition than 
the Origin oj Species, thereby justifying the 
wisdom of the delay. His general position may 
be stated as follows : he could not admit of any 
break between man and the rest of animal 
creation, for the physical affinities of the human 
race with lower forms of like structure were so 
marked that they compelled him to push his 
evolutionary theory to its logical conclusion. 

It is interesting to note, however, that 
Wallace, in his explanation of the origin of 
man, introduces other important factors into 
the process. He does not deny the devel- 
opment of man's moral and intellectual fac- 
ulties from animals, yet he affirms that they 
have not been evolved by natural selection. 
Their operating cause cannot be discovered in 
the realm of natural law, but are to be found 
in the unseen kingdom of spirit. Three stages, 
containing much besides the human, exist in 
the unfolding of organic life. At each of these 
stages some superior power must necessarily 
have entered into action. The first marks 
[311 



Charles Darwin 

the change from the inorganic to the organic, 
when the earliest vegetable cell was a new 
thing in the world. The second is still more 
marvelous, for it heralds the dawn of con- 
sciousness — the fundamental distinction be- 
tween the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The 
third is the appearance in man of those noble 
faculties and primary moral characteristics 
which raise him forever above the brute and 
open up possibilities of almost infinite advance- 
ment. These higher powers could not have 
been developed by the same laws which ruled 
the organic world. They are so distinctively 
different in quality from purely biological 
results that they suggest a world of spirit to 
which the world of matter is altogether sub- 
ordinate. Conscious life is a progressive mani- 
festation dependent upon different forms of 
spirit influx. If this ascensive scale of reason- 
ing is valid, evolution is homocentric, and 
not only does it not degrade man, but man 
confers purpose and honor on evolution. He 
is the crown of its ageless and infinite processes, 
and he is equipped with spiritual powers that 
make him the one supernormal fact before which 
ordinary explanations are inadequate. He 
reflects the moral nature of the Deity and dis- 
closes the moral meaning of the universe, 
while his destiny gives worth to the drama of 
existence as enacted on this planet. 

The only way of escape from these conclu- 
[32] 



Charles Darwin 

sions is by disregarding the evidence adduced, 
and defining the whole creation as an aimless 
process, which has no conscious reason for its 
existence, indicates no aim, and simply moves 
in blind obedience to inexorable and soulless 
law. This way is barred by the truth, now 
widely recognized, that mechanism cannot 
produce mind, nor can matter be ultimately 
permuted into thought. Lord Kelvin, the 
greatest philosophical scientist of the closing 
days of the last century, wrote to the London 
Times: "Scientific thought is compelled to 
accept the idea of Creative Power. Forty 
years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere 
in the country, if he believed that the grass 
and the flowers which he saw around us grew 
by mere chemical forces. He answered, 'No, 
no more than I could believe that the books 
of botany describing them could grow by mere 
chemical forces.' Every action of human free 
will is a miracle to physical and chemical and 
mathematical science." ^ 

The theistic conception of the universe has 
been held by many scientists, some of whom 
deemed it not only morally desirable but 
philosophically and scientifically necessary. 
Their change of attitude is indicated by the 
statement of Lord Kelvin that behind all 
phenomena there is the power of a Supreme 
Intelligence. The knowledge of God can be 

^ Cf. Bowne's Immanence oj God, Chap. I, p. 21. 
[33] 



Ch arles Darwin 

obtained by an inductive process of reasoning 
from known data, and the revelation of His 
character must then be discerned in the person 
and teaching of Jesus Christ. Such is the 
general course indicated by theological thinkers 
like Martineau, Fairbairn, Walker, and Gwat- 
kin. According to them we can proceed from 
philosophy through metaphysics to a broad 
and sufficient theological basis. The nat- 
ural phenomena science discerns, philosophy 
unifies under the governance of certain prin- 
ciples; metaphysics weaves those principles 
into a higher unity, and Christian theology 
concentrates and clothes them in the doctrine 
of the Divine Fatherhood. Professor Henry 
Jones of the University of Glasgow has appo- 
sitely said that "the scientific investigator 
who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets the limi- 
tations of his province as to use his natural 
data as premises for religious or irreligious 
conclusions, is as illogical as the popular 
preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions 
because they are not consistent with his theo- 
logical presuppositions. Looking only at their 
primary aspect, we cannot say that religious 
presuppositions and the scientific interpreta- 
tion of facts are either consistent or inconsistent; 
they are simply different. Their harmony or 
discord can come only when the higher princi- 
ples of philosophy have been fully developed, 
and when the departmental ideas of the various 
[34] 



Charles Darwin 

sciences are organized into a view of the world 
as a whole." ^ This task has still to be accom- 
plished; the forces from below and above have 
yet to meet; and when they do, it will be as 
friends and not as foes. Moralists and scientists 
will not always treat each other with scorn and 
misunderstanding. A more comprehensive 
view of the movements of human knowledge 
will show that not one of these has labored in 
vain. The growth of that knowledge is toward 
unity by the perception of differences, differ- 
ences which, duly considered, constitute a final 
harmony. The poets have seen this. Their 
prescience rebukes the disputes which have 
hindered its coming; and though their dreams 
may not be admitted by hard-and-fast rational- 
ists, they are a prophecy and an inspiration. 
Those who would purify themselves by observ- 
ing and thinking upon the ways of Deity must 
accept the lessons science has to teach, remem- 
bering that its ultimate movement is up and 
not down, forward toward idealism, and not 
backward to mere beginnings. The theistic 
view can have no quarrel with the proven 
results of scientific research; it can have no 
alliance with the reactionary obscurantism 
which opposes such results without reason or 
proof to the contrary. 

Speculative reflections on the course of 
nature have shaken the convictions of many 

^ Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 36. 
[35] 



Charles Darwin 

in regard to the benevolence therein displayed. 
The cosmic process is so unlimited, the organic 
world so mysterious and replete with pain and 
death, that the older theistic arguments have 
failed to deal with the situation. They can- 
not cope with the groaning and travailing of 
creation. In this intellectual chaos man finds 
himself endowed with certain capacities which 
can eventually win the mastery over death, 
and he sees in Christ one who actually was 
its Master, whose very being was the incarna- 
tion of truth, whose claims have been sup- 
ported by His achievements. He stands forth 
in time, a solitary figure, the conscious regen- 
erator and representative of a new humanity, 
the redeemer, whose person was the source of 
immortality, whose teaching transfigured the 
life that now is and revealed that which is to 
come. He bade all who yearn for these con- 
summations to come unto Him. He expressed 
the character of the otherwise unknown Deity 
and the potentialities of His offspring. This 
gospel of God as the universal Parent, who 
made heaven and earth, who, while immanent 
in all that is, is yet transcendent, who is soul 
and circumference of the whole, has changed 
the visible world into a pellucid garment behind 
which throbs the Hfe and love divine. In Him 
the creation is spirit- woven; thought and sense, 
spirit and matter, are reconciled. Thus believ- 
ing, as Christ has taught us, God is no longer a 
[36] 



Charles Darwin 

hidden God, nor yet a vague and shadowy im- 
personality encompassing the infinitudes. He 
is seen, as Archbishop Fenelon said, "in every- 
thing, and everything in Him; all that exists, 
existing only by the communication of His 
exhaustless being; all that has intelligence 
having it only by derivation from His sovereign 
reason; all that acts, acting only from the 
impulse of His supreme activity," ^ In this 
faith we can await with confidence the time 
when the region of a true religion will include 
the interpretations of a complete science. 
There have been and there are periods of 
struggle and sacrifice; and the sufferings these 
involved have shaken many hearts. Without 
denying their reality or extent, it is possible 
to exaggerate them, and Wallace went so far as 
to argue at some length that the popular con- 
ception of pain and misery in the animal world 
is the reverse of the truth. The entire scheme 
accomplishes the maximum of life and of life's 
equipments with the minimum of pain and 
misery. Indeed, it would be difficult, according 
to him, to imagine a system by which a greater 
balance of happiness could have been secured. ^ 
We can leave the apportionment of pain and 
joy in creation to a future assignment. As 
for progress itself, we know it is based on the 
law of sacrifice; everywhere and always the 

^ Cf. lUingwortli's Divine Immanence, p. 24. 
^ Wallace's Darwinism, p. 40. 
[37] 



Charles Darwin 

two are coextensive. Suffering among civi- 
lized peoples is an element which we try to 
banish yet we are not blind to its educative 
uses. Man's immortality and perfectibility 
beckon us forward despite the cost, because 
in them the spiritual secret of the entire uni- 
verse is revealed. And what is true in religion 
is also true in ethics. Justice, mercy, and 
charity have been strengthened by their con- 
flict with the evils they oppose and destroy, 
and the history of these virtues signifies for 
them a higher and more permanent rule in 
the future of the race. 

V 

Throughout life Darwin was subject to violent 
paroxysms of pain, which often occasioned great 
alarm to his friends. He was never able to work 
consecutively for more than twenty minutes 
without interruption from these infirmities. 
The extent of his afflictions was never known 
to any save his faithful and devoted wife, who 
gave her entire time and strength to the care 
of his health, and the beautiful correspondence 
of their domestic life was the explanation of 
much he was able to accomplish. He could 
have been the center of social life among all 
ranks; but he was seldom seen beyond his 
own home at Down, for he was never sure of 
freedom from one of these sudden visitations. 
They so enfeebled him that even a brief journey 
[38] 



Charles D arwin 

to London was exhausting. Burdened with ex- 
traordinary difficulties, he achieved his results 
by the exercise of the sternest resolution. 
Every moment he could gain was spent in 
methodical and laborious studies, and the list 
of his various publications testifies to this 
unremitting energy. His modesty was almost 
a weakness; and when he confessed, with touch- 
ing simplicity, that he believed he had acted 
rightly in steadily following and devoting him- 
self to science, those who revered him knew 
not which to admire the more, his great gifts 
or his incurable humility. He was fortunate 
in his friendships. The names of Wallace, 
Hooker, Scrope, and Lyell are associated with 
his fame; and the really impressive worth of 
these men was not so much their intellectual 
greatness as the grandeur of character, 
the unexampled forbearance, and the mutual 
assistance which distinguished them as coad- 
jutors in a notable cause. Some votaries of 
science have shown themselves disastrously 
prejudiced and jealous; they have been more 
anxious for the priority of their personal claims 
than for the purity of their motive or the 
progress of knowledge. But this band of giants 
dwelt in a fellowship marred by no regrettable 
incidents, and strove toward the attainment of 
a great ideal, hand in hand and conjoined in 
heart, in honor preferring one another. 

It is interesting to note the effect of Darwin's 
[39] 



Charles Darwin 

inquiries on his personal religious life. As a 
boy he was very susceptible to spiritual im- 
pressions, and after he began his scientific 
career he was still a Theist, though gravely per- 
plexed by the pain incident to animal existence. 
When he published the Origin he still believed 
in a personal God, and considered that the 
grand and wondrous universe, with our con- 
scious selves, was the chief argument for such 
a faith. Later in life he stated that the theory 
of evolution was quite compatible with belief 
in that God, but added that different persons 
have different definitions of what they mean by 
God. His confessions were never meant for 
the public eye. He felt strongly that a man's 
religion is a matter concerning himself alone. 
Yet the fluctuations of his religious moods 
are now public property, and they show that 
in the extremes of doubt he was of an agnostic 
tendency, but never an atheist in the sense of 
denying a Supreme Being. In the autobiog- 
raphy he wrote for his family, occurs a passage 
describing his solitariness in a Brazilian forest, 
his spirit resurgent with the higher feelings of 
wonder, almost worship which elevate the 
mind. "Now," he continues, "the grandest 
scenes would not cause any such convictions 
to arise in me. It may be truly said that I am 
like a man who has become color-blind, and 
the universal belief by men in the existence of 
redness makes my loss of perception of not the 
[40] 



Charles Darwin 

least value as evidence."^ If Schleiermacher 
is correct in stating that the home of religion 
is in the emotional nature of man, there may 
here be a better explanation than has been 
surmised for the waning of religious faith and 
sentiment in Darwin. His aesthetic tastes 
and propensities were atrophied by reason of 
his absorption in the study of the laws of 
nature. Until he was thirty years of age the 
poetry of Milton, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
and Shelley gave him pleasure. He read the 
historical plays of Shakespeare with delight, 
and music and art were also sources of recrea- 
tion. But in later life they nauseated him, 
and he secured a temporary respite from his 
toils by listening to the reading of books that 
did not call for the exercise of much concen- 
tration. His mind had become a machine for 
grinding laws out of large collections of facts, 
and he deplored the injury thus inflicted upon 
his mental and moral capacities. 

A hundred years have passed away since 
Charles Darwin was born, the last fifty of which 
have been dominated by him more than by 
any other man of science. A great soul is the 
epitome of the race, and in so great a soul as 
his, dedicated to the search for truth, the race 
was born to larger opportunities. He was the 
first to catch and reflect a light, the conscious 
advent of which, without him, might have 

^ Darwin's Autobiography and Letters (N. Y., 1893), p. 65. 
[41] 



Charles Darwin 

been indefinitely postponed. He created a 
revolution which has had no equal in the 
intellectual history of the modern world since 
the Renaissance and the Reformation. His 
mind, like an artesian well, was pierced deeply 
by his constant meditations, and a stream of 
clear truth sprang forth which washed away 
the barriers that restrained scientific and even 
religious thought. He gave coherence and 
meaning to the inchoate accumulations of 
natural knowledge. He stimulated research 
and mapped out the lines on which it could 
intelligently proceed to ascertainable ends. 
Nor is it too much to say that his work "chas- 
tened and refined"^ not only the intellectual 
but "the moral aspects" of science and philoso- 
phy. The entire field of human effort has 
acquired new promise and dignity. For al- 
though biology was the cradle of the movement, 
its ramifications have spread into many other 
fields which have become abundantly fertile. 
To Darwin belongs the unspeakable merit of 
inoculating his own and future generations with 
the idea of progressive development. The 
statesman, the social reformer, and the theo- 
logian have been touched with a new^ enthusi- 
asm born of the hope of better things. They 
determined to parallel the story of progress in 
nature by effecting a like unfolding in the 
realms of politics, ethics, and religion. In 

* Fifty Years of Darwinism, p. 4. 
[42] 



Charles Darwin 

directing the eyes of the world toward an ideal, 
all the more attractive because its outlines are 
lost in the bright faith of a possible perfecti- 
bility, Darwin did the greatest service man can 
render to his fellows. 

A day dawned when controversy was hushed 
in the presence of death; criticism gave place 
to tribute; and all vied with each other in their 
eulogies on the departed scientist. Huxley, 
who knew him intimately, voiced the common 
sentiments when he referred to the extraordinary 
affection and esteem for his character as a man, 
and the veneration for his endowments as a 
scientific philosopher, which were felt through- 
out the world. Intellectually he had no superior, 
and his infinite variety and accuracy of knowl- 
edge attracted the best minds. "Acute as 
were his reasoning powers, vast as was his 
knowledge, marvelous as was his tenacious 
industry, brave as was the struggle he waged 
against ill health, these were not the qualities," 
continued Huxley, "which impressed those 
who were admitted to his friendship; but a 
certain and almost passionate honesty, by 
which all his thoughts and actions were irradi- 
ated as by a central fire, was the rarest and 
greatest endowment." , 

Darwin died suddenly on the 19th of April, 
1882, and on the 24th was buried in England's 
great Abbey at Westminster, in accordance with 

^ Huxley's Darwiniana, pp. 245-246. 
[43] 



Charles Darwin 

the general feeling that such a man should not 
go to the grave without the chief recognition 
the British nation can bestow on her elect sons. 
The body rests by the side of that of Sir Isaac 
Newton, who did for the heavens what Darwin 
did for the earth. "For just so surely as the dis- 
covery and demonstration of the law of gravita- 
tion established order in the place of chaos, 
and laid a lasting foundation for all future 
study of the heavens, so surely the discovery 
of the law of natural selection established a 
firm basis for all future study of nature." 



[44] 



SECOND LECTURE 
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose 
to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do 
injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt 
her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who 
ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open 
encounter?" John Milton. 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



IT is an appropriate transition from Darwin 
to the man who was his close ally and fight- 
ing general in the controversies aroused by the 
publication of the Origin of Species and The 
Descent of Man. Darwin could not have been 
more fortunate in his exponent, advocate, and 
defender. He seldom noticed attacks which 
were ill-natured and unjust, and maintained a 
dignified silence in the presence of a frantic 
and unscrupulous opposition. Some extreme 
participants endeavored to stifle the evolution 
theory at its inception. Scientists have placed 
the chief blame for this hasty condemnation 
upon theologians and ecclesiastics, ignoring the 
fact that not a few of their own leaders repu- 
diated the Darwinian hypothesis as untenable 
and absurd. Without enlarging on the strange 
conduct of Sir Richard Owen, whose shujQflings 
provoked even the gentle nature of Darwin, 
Sir Charles Lyell had considerable difficulty in 
preventing Sir William Dawson from adversely 
reviewing the Origin before he had opened the 
book. After naturalists had begun to feel the 
weight of its reasonings, they were slow to 
admit them. As a newly discovered principle, 
[47] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

natural selection was compelled to face an 
unprepared and prejudiced public. 

At this juncture Thomas Henry Huxley 
stepped into the breach, threw down the 
gauntlet, and during the strenuous period that 
followed became the recognized champion of 
freedom for scientific thought and utterance. 
He was already favorably known to Darwin, 
who had declared that there were three men in 
Britain upon whose verdict he relied, Lyell, 
Hooker, and Huxley. If he could convince 
them, he could afford to wait for the rest. The 
last of the three, a brilliant young scientist still 
in his thirties, who by the extent and accuracy 
of his knowledge, and the soundness of his 
scientific judgment, had become equally formi- 
dable as an opponent or apologist. After rapidly 
reviewing the Origin, he wrote to the author : 
"As for your doctrine, I am prepared to go to 
the stake, if requisite, in support of Chapter IX 
and most parts of Chapters X, XI, XII. ... I 
trust you will not allow yourself to be in any 
way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable 
abuse and misrepresentation which, unless I 
greatly mistake, is in store for you. . . . Some 
of your friends, at any rate, are endowed with 
an amount of combativeness which (though 
you have often and justly rebuked it) may 
stand you in good stead. I am sharpening up 
my claws and beak in readiness." ^ 

1 Lije and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Vol. I, p. 188-189. 
[48] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

The writer of this mihtant letter was born 
at EaHng, a suburb of London, on May 4, 1825. 
He was the seventh and youngest surviving 
child of George Huxley, senior master in the 
well-known school of Dr. Nicholas. In his 
Recollections he ascribes the majority of his 
physical traits to his mother, whose maiden 
name was Rachel Withers. His faculties of 
intuition and criticism, his keenness of per- 
ception and flashes of sardonic humor were also 
a maternal inheritance. They were helpful 
gifts, though not without serious drawbacks. 
He confessed that at intervals they played him 
sad tricks and were in need of constant restraint. 
Deeply attached to that mother, young Huxley 
would lie awake at night possessed by the 
morbid fears of a sensitive and affectionate 
child, and wondering what would become of 
him in the event of her death. When at length 
the dreaded blow fell, it crushed him, and for a 
time his grief knew no bounds. He was not 
an easy boy to understand, and her approbation 
and sympathy had been his highest rewards. 
His eldest and always favorite sister promptly 
took the mother's place, and but for her en- 
couragement at this crisis he might have lost 
forever the buoyancy and determination which 
afterward enabled him to stem the tides of a 
tempestuous career. To his father were due 
his choleric temper, tenacity of purpose, love 
for paintings and music, and the artistic faculty 
[49] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

which enabled him to make those instanta- 
neous and vivid sketches with which he illumi- 
nated his lectures. 

II 

Huxley's early education was not so thorough 
as might have been expected; but the academic 
loss was compensated by his zeal for literature, 
his indomitable will, and the intercourse he 
shared with well-informed people. When he 
was twelve he read Hutton's Geology, a valuable 
book which preceded Lyell's Principles, and a 
little later he studied Hamilton's Logic. The 
author, however, who most profoundly influ- 
enced his formative years and inspired his high 
ideals of duty and passion for veracity, his 
abhorrence of unreality and contempt for sub- 
terfuge, was Thomas Carlyle. In 1840 he 
obtained a copy of Sartor Resartus, and from 
that moment he was made aware of the pur- 
pose and discipline of life. An incidental result 
of his contact with the Sage of Chelsea was his 
esteem for Continental languages. He at once 
commenced the study of German, and also 
obtained a thorough knowledge of French and 
Italian. These acquirements later enabled him 
to tabulate international scientific authorities, 
and by their means he systematized the results 
of foreign research and compared them with his 
own. For a youth of fifteen to gain unaided a 
knowledge of foreign tongues was almost un- 
[50] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

known in England at that time. Huxley's in- 
sight was always remarkably acute. He saw 
how Teutonic thought had fed the flame of 
Carlyle's genius, and he determined to make 
himself familiar with the masters of philosophy, 
history, and science in their own speech. 

As he approached his majority, interesting 
glimpses concerning his impressions and obser- 
vations can be gathered from his reminiscences. 
Speculations on the why and wherefore of 
things in general, discussions on the rights and 
wrongs of existing institutions, a chronic im- 
pulse to penetrate to the bed-rock of facts, are 
frequently found; while prevading all else there 
is a contemptuous indignation toward any- 
thing that savors of injustice and oppression. 
This resentment was painfully accentuated 
during his residence in Rotherhithe, where he 
commenced his medical studies with a certain 
Dr. Chandler. Here, in the black heart of one 
of London's centers of destitution and igno- 
rance, unmitigated vice and misery abounded. 
Squalid surroundings, with their resultant 
waste of humanity, drew from Huxley the bitter 
comment that the place was "a vast Serbonian 
bog, which swallowed up hope and being." 
Contact with these sickening scenes of woeful 
social disorder left an indelible impression on 
him; they cut him to the quick, and many years 
afterward he said, "I have had the oppor- 
tunity of seeing for myself something of the 
[51] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

way in which the poor of London live; not 
much, indeed, but still enough to give a terrible 
foundation of real knowledge to my specula- 
tions." 1 

He escaped to a less poverty-stricken section 
of the city, and joined his brother-in-law, Dr. 
John Godwin Scott, as a preliminary to obtain- 
ing his medical degree at London University. 
The conditions for the entrance examinations 
required testimonials of character, and among 
those solicited was John Henry Newman, then 
an Anglican vicar, who had once been a pupil 
in the school of Dr. Nicholas. In 1842 he was 
admitted to Charing Cross Hospital, and 
finally, in 1845, graduated with marked suc- 
cess in chemistry, anatomy, and philosophy. 
The professor in the last-named subject, 
Wharton Jones, impressed Huxley as much by 
his personality as by his teaching. His fellow 
students recalled in after days the tall, cadaver- 
ous youth, whose extraordinary energy resulted 
in his first contribution to science — a hitherto 
undiscovered structure in the human hair 
sheath. This discovery is still known as 

"Huxley's layer." 

Ill 

His application, on leaving college, for a 
position as surgeon in the Royal Navy secured 
him an appointment to the frigate Rattlesnake 
as assistant to Dr. Thompson. In one respect 

1 Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Vol. I, p. 16. 
[52] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

there is a similarity between his beginnings as 
a scientist and those of his intimate friends 
Darwin and Hooker. Darwin made his famous 
voyage in the Beagle, Hooker accompanied Sir 
James Ross to the Antarctic regions, and 
Huxley spent four years in the Australian 
waters. 

After vexatious delays, against which Hux- 
ley chafed, the cruise of the Rattlesnake 
began on December 3, 1846, under the com- 
mand of Captain Stanley, the brother of the 
well-known Dean of Westminster. Sydney 
was reached on July 16, 1847. The Admiralty 
offered meager provision for the researches 
Huxley was expected to make; but the lack of 
a suitable equipment only spurred him to 
additional efforts, and added merit to his 
achievements. His published results dealt with 
the lower organisms known before as Zoophytes 
and now as Coelenterata. He carefully arranged 
the series, and demonstrated that a common 
plan of structure obtained among them. His 
generalizations upon these, together with other 
kindred matters, were in themselves sufficient 
to give him commendable rank in any philo- 
sophical history of zoology. The results were 
forwarded to the Linnaean Society, London, 
"with much the same outcome as that gained 
by Noah when he sent forth the raven from 
the ark." Exasperated by this neglect, he 
turned to the Royal Society and placed before 
[53] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

it an elaborate account of the anatomy and 
affinity of the Medusae. "This venture proved 
to be his dove, although he was not aware of it 
until his return home." On June 5, 1851, 
Huxley was elected a fellow of the Society, 
being one of fifteen selected from a list of thirty- 
eight candidates — an honor indeed, the re- 
ward of sheer hard work, and, needless to 
say, unstained by the slightest intrigue. The 
unknown student who left Charing Cross Hos- 
pital in 1846, too young as yet to qualify for 
entrance at the College of Surgeons, was now 
at twenty-six a member of the world's pre- 
mier organization for the advancement of 
scientific learning. Nothing could have been 
more conducive to this propitious end than his 
solitary life at sea. • He had set out with a sat- 
isfactory groundwork in anatomy and physiol- 
ogy; he returned an expert in these departments 
of knowledge and a learned ethnologist. A 
layman in science can scarcely appreciate 
the value of personal observation and experi- 
ment if untrammeled thought is to be devel- 
oped. The discoverer of such results as Huxley 
obtained must be detached, independent, free 
from the dictation of conventional schools, and 
thrown upon his own intellectual resources. 
He is then compelled to test each simple object 
as regards its properties and history. There 
is risk in this, because it is the business of the 
pioneer; but Huxley, escaping the dogmas of 
[54] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

scientific sects, challenged the risk and won the 
prize. Virchow's observation that this is not an 
unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted 
with the progress of knowledge can be extended 
to all who, like the youthful surgeon of the 
Rattlesnake, have dared, after making every 
possible reckoning, to steer their own course. 
The spirit of his enterprise is vigorously por- 
trayed in a letter which deals with his aims 
and prospects. "There are," he says, "many 
nice people in this world, for whose praise or 
blame I care not a whistle. I don't know, and 
I don't care, whether I shall ever be what is 
called a great man. I will leave my mark 
somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct 
[T. H. H., his mark], and free from the 
abominable blur of cant, humbug, and self- 
seeking which surrounds everything in this 
present world — that is to say, supposing that 
I am not already unconsciously tainted 
myself, a result of which I have a morbid 
dread." ^ 

Though highly controversial, Huxley had a 
warm and sensitive nature, which found its 
climax in the perfect sympathy and charming 
intercourse of his domestic life. He met his 
future wife. Miss Henrietta Anna Heathorn, 
while he was attached to the Australian Expe- 
dition, and after a long and protracted court- 
ship they were married. When she arrived in 

2 Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, p. 69. 
[551 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

England, she was seriously impaired in health, 
and he was a poor and struggling professional 
man; but he tenderly nursed her back to 
strength, and she entered into his life with a 
fulness of reciprocal affection which aroused to 
activity the nobler elements of his character. 
Their son Leonard eulogizes the wife and mother 
who was to be his father's stay for forty years: 
"in his struggles ready to counsel, in adversity 
to comfort; the critic whose verdict he valued 
above almost any, and whose praise he cared 
most to win." ^ She was his first care and last 
thought, and their entire married life was a 
notable example of mutual helpfulnes and ser- 
vice. 

IV 

For some time after Huxley's return to Eng- 
land repeated repulses discouraged him; but 
the year 1854 brought him some of the more 
solid tokens of success. "I have finally decided 
that my vocation is science," he writes to an 
Australian friend; "and I have made up my 
mind to the comparative poverty which is its 
necessary adjunct, and to the no less certain 
seclusion from the ordinary pleasures and 
rewards of men." ^ In this sacrificial temper 
he began and ended his career. His earliest 
ambition was to become a mechanical engi- 

^ Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Vol. I, p. 39. 
2 Ibid, Vol. I, p. 101. 

[56] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

neer, and in a retrospective mood he is not 
sure that he had not been one all along, though 
in partibus infidelium. Physiology, which was 
his chief delight, is but the working out of the 
wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and 
thousands of diverse living constructions, show- 
ing their mechanical engineering, and the modi- 
fications of similar apparatus to serve diverse 
ends. 

Huxley's labors in behalf of public instruc- 
tion were second only to his achievements as 
an eminent scientist, and his definition of a 
liberal education has become a classic. It is 
found in a lecture delivered at the Working 
Men's College, London, in 1868: 

"That man, I think, has had a liberal edu- 
cation who has been so trained in his youth 
that his body is the ready servant of his will, 
and does with ease and pleasure all the work 
that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose 
intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all 
its parts of equal strength, and in smooth work- 
ing order, ready, like a steam-engine, to be 
turned to any kind of work, and spin the 
gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the 
mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge 
of the great and fundamental truths of Nature 
and of the laws of her operations; one who, no 
stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose 
passions are trained to come to heel by a 
vigorous will, the servant of a tender con- 
[57] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

science; who has learnt to love all beauty 
whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, 
and to respect others as himself. Such a one, 
and no other, I conceive, has a liberal education; 
for he is, as completely as a man can be, in 
harmony with Nature. He will make the best 
of her, and she of him. They will get on 
together rarely: she as his ever-beneficent 
mother ; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious 
self, her minister and interpreter."^ 

This severe and dignified utterance is as no- 
table for what it omits as for what it includes; 
yet his faith in it never wavered for an instant, 
and he extended its possibilities to all alike, 
tradesmen, artisans, and members of aristo- 
cratic circles. Huxley was not one of those 
superior dons who regard with aversion the 
multitude beyond the academy, or who deem 
a popular lecture unworthy of the serious 
efforts of a philosopher or a scholar. On the 
contrary, the task of putting the truths of the 
laboratory and the museum into language 
which was strictly accurate and yet intelligible 
taxed his scientific and literary powers to the 
utmost. St. George Mivart tells us that the 
need of clearness was often brought home 
to the professor when addressing promiscuous 
audiences. At the close of one of his efforts 
at the Royal Institution a lady approached him, 
and, after profuse thanks for the intellectual 

^ Collected Essays: Science and Education, p. 86. 
[58] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

treat he had given her, ventured to say 
there was one point she did not quite under- 
stand: "You referred to the cerebellum, and 
I did not gather whether you said this was 
inside the skull or outside." Experiences of 
this kind were more frequent than one would 
imagine, and they enforced upon Huxley the 
simplicity of exposition which gave urbanity 
and elasticity to his style. The first series of 
lectures to working men, just mentioned, was 
delivered in 1855. They were free from the 
pedantries of technical dialect, and revealed to 
thousands who dwelt in the common ways of 
men the fruits of his remote and arduous pur- 
suits. The one on A Piece of Chalk is a sterling 
example of the perspicacity and maturity of his 
popular utterances. Without injuring for a 
moment the comprehension and fidelity, de- 
tail and description involved in the matters 
treated, he strove to make his meaning acces- 
sible to those who could not have had any pre- 
vious knowledge of the subject. He enabled 
the non-scientific but shrewd workmen who 
crowded his lecture-halls to see the truth as he 
saw it, and the result was that experts them- 
selves acknowledged these deliverances to be 
masterpieces of lucid reasoning and genuine 
eloquence. He satirically deplores the loss of 
that mellifluous oratory which leads, far more 
surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, 
to the highest places in Church and State, and 
[59] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

states that he has been obliged to content him- 
self with saying what he meant to say in the 
plainest of plain language. 

The inaugural address of Johns Hopkins 
University in the centennial year of 1876 is a 
complete specimen of the new combination of 
science with literature which his speeches had 
effected. The lectures on evolution were first 
heard in New York City. On his arrival he 
was introduced to Professor O. C. Marsh, who 
had made a careful study of fossils gathered 
from the strata of the Western states. Marsh 
presented his data to Huxley before he began 
his course. It was entirely new to him, and he 
promptly avowed his indebtedness. The facts 
demonstrated for the first time the direct line 
of descent of an existing animal. "With the 
generosity of true greatness," says Professor 
Marsh, "he gave up his own opinions in the 
face of truth, and took my conclusions as the 
basis of his famous lecture on the horse." ^ 

Huxley was at home in the United States, and 
he everywhere received a warm welcome. His 
instincts were entirely democratic. His ad- 
vocacy of thought and speech, as well as his 
standing as an authority on debated issues, 
commended him to a freedom-loving people. 
All classes of society were interested in him : 
the miners of California read his essays at 
night around their camp-fires, and the univer- 

^ Marsh's Life, Vol. I, p. 462, English edition. 
[60] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

sities and various bodies of learning united 
to do him honor. From the day he landed 
until his departure the visit was crowded 
with gratifying experiences. His comments on 
American life and scenery were character- 
istically pungent. "In the Old World the 
first things you see as you approach a great 
city are steeples," he said; "here you see first 
centers of intelligence." It was an infirmity of 
this gifted mind that it could not associate 
church spires with intelligence. He gazed in- 
tently at the tugboats which tore up and down 
New York Harbor, and remarked, "If I were 
not a man I think I should like to be a tug."^ 
The fitness of his second preference will be 
admitted by those who have seen this particu- 
lar craft, and who also understand his restless 
and resistless genius. 

He readily perceived the vital relation be- 
tween education and democracy, and he avowed 
his belief in science as a fountain of ideas which 
must sanitate the rule of the people. "Man 
does not live by bread alone," and the highest 
function of institutions for education is to 
seek out and cherish those leaders who will 
carry the interpretation of nature a step farther 
than their predecessors. By their agencies the 
moral worth and intellectual clearness of the 
individual citizen are secured, and the general 
welfare is advanced. 

^ Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 494. 
[61] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 



Ethics occupy almost as important a sphere in 
Huxley's teaching as science or education. He 
had a noble conception of character, and placed 
clever men low in the scale of his esteem. To 
Wilfred Ward he said, "Men of ability are 
common enough, but men of character and con- 
viction are very rare." ^ In this statement 
there is nothing of the cynicism of Diogenes; it 
rather hints at the tremendous struggle involved 
in building up true character. He showed him- 
self freely to kindred spirits like Charles King- 
sley, and spoke feelingly of the influences which 
had saved him from shipwreck. His indebted- 
ness to Carlyle, who taught him that a deep 
sense of religion was compatible with the entire 
absence of theology; his scientific research, in 
itself a severe lesson in morality, and the love 
he bore his wife and children were the grounds 
where he cast anchor and outrode the storms. 
They were also the bases of his frequent con- 
tributions to ethical discussions, which cannot 
be given at length, but which find their highest 
expression in the Romanes Lecture on Evolu- 
tion and Ethics delivered at Oxford in 1893. It 
was brilliant, evincing a large grasp of the 
necessary facts, a true sense of historical per- 
spective, a capacity for keen analysis, and the 
breezy candor which we have learned to asso- 

^ Nineteenth Century, Vol. XL, p. 284. 
[62] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

ciate with his utterances. He passes in review 
ethical theories of many nations and cults. 
Oriental and Occidental, Greek and Roman, 
ancient and modern. When he comes to his 
own, it appears to be a scientific Buddhism, 
with a heroism optimistic rather than pessi- 
mistic as the main feature of differentiation. 
Two prominent and descriptive phrases fur- 
nish the gate of entrance into the heart of the 
conception he wished to convey. He speaks of 
"the cosmic process," and "the ethical process." 
The first needs a word of explanation, the 
second is in direct opposition to the first. 

For Huxley, as for Darwin, the struggle for 
existence in the life of the organic world was a 
fact involving tremendous issues, and beset by 
complications they could not wholly unravel. It 
constantly recurs in all their discussions of the 
problems of development. It had, as we have 
seen in the case of Malthus, a profound and 
formative influence on the theories of the 
methods of creation advanced by them and 
many other nineteenth-century scientists. Per- 
haps there was no more insurmountable barrier 
to faith than the one its diflSculties furnished. 
Yet not all agree with Huxley concerning the 
extent and severity of the conflict. He speaks 
of a "civil war" between the realms of nature 
and of morals, and this war must continue, 
since the moral progress of society "depends, 
not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in 
[63] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

running away from it, but in combating it." 
Russel Wallace would not have admitted so 
much as this/ and Prince Ejopotkin reads 
into the character of lower creation his own 
kindness and generosity. Indeed, he goes too 
far in the opposite direction from Huxley, and 
fails to perceive that where animals form com- 
binations they do so for mutual defense and 
aggression; that where they remain solitary, 
as in the case of the tiger, it is because they 
can live ^ without cooperation. But if nature 
is not an incipient paradise, nor is it a con- 
tinual shambles. Deeds of blood are constantly 
perpetrated ; yet, like those of the ancient Greek 
tragedy, they are to a great extent carefully 
hidden. There would be no place for poetry 
and romance in the world if "nothing but 
slaughter 'were' going on from morn till noon, 
from noon till dewy eve." The "lives of the 
hunted" are largely interspaces of quiet con- 
tentment varied by occasional crises. The 
crises are due to geographical changes, inclem- 
ent seasons, epidemics, the immense loss in- 
curred in the early stages, and the intolerance 
of the group toward a weak member or toward 
other groups. Hence the law prevails that 
there is no species of animals or plants which 
does not depend on its fitness for its existence. 
This law prevents the rapidity of increase 

^ See lecture on Darwin, p. 37. 

* See F. W. Headley's Life and Evolution, Chap. Ill, pp. 215 flf. 
[64] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

which can only be checked by such competition. 
For if all the potentialities of created life became 
actualities, it would swarm on land and sea as 
the frogs swarmed in Egypt, and ensure its 
own destruction ; nor could it fail to drag man 
into the evils of such unrestraint. The same 
struggle goes on among plants, though it is less 
apparent. Parasites flourish in the vegetable 
kingdom, and one tree ousts another from the 
soil. But man has almost a monopoly of the 
misery of the world. The children of the poor 
are frequently so ill-bred and ill-nourished that 
they lack the vital exuberance which is the 
right of living beings. The stern discipline 
found in nature, and which renders the great 
service of arresting worthless types and blot- 
ting out hereditary diseases, cannot obtain 
in the ethical process. That fostering care 
displayed by the fierce beast of the forest 
toward its young is sometimes lacking in those 
dehumanized and degraded parents who cruelly 
oppress and neglect their offspring. When, in 
addition to these truths, we recall human sen- 
sibility to physical pain, and the penalties it 
inflicts upon the spiritual consciousness, the 
entire spectacle is a soul-moving horror which 
has caused every lover of his kind to mourn. 
Even in England forty-eight per cent of the 
population die before the age of twenty-five, 
and preventable diseases account for many of 
these deaths. 

[65] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

The survey is not a hopeful one, save from 
the Christian standpoint of a redemptive im- 
mortahty, in which the law of compensation 
shall rectify the known wrongs of man's pres- 
ent heritage. And this should not induce us 
to consent to any relaxation of the merciful 
energies of reHef, but rather inspire wise and 
philanthropic effort to readjust the burdens 
of the social state, and thus realize as speedily 
as possible a present deliverance from such 
intolerable ills. Huxley accepted the gist of 
the last statement as setting forth a necessary 
outcome of the ethical process. While in 
nature might is the only right, and its mes- 
sage is "Be strong or you die," in morals 
ruthless self-assertion gives place to self- 
restraint; weakness is not a crime punishable 
by death, but a fact to be dealt with by en- 
lightened human sympathy; and instead of a 
policy of fighting for the survival of the fittest, 
society ordains a new one which ensures jus- 
tice and happiness to the many. He believed 
that both these processes were summed up in 
the laws of nature, inasmuch as man, "physical, 
intellectual, and moral, is as much a part of 
nature, as purely a product of the cosmic 
process, as the humblest weed." 

His idea of the opposition is that of a man 

trying to break a piece of string; the right arm 

is in antagonism to the left arm, yet both arms 

derive their energy from the same original 

[66] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

source. Hence the conflict between natural and 
moral principles is really a necessary element 
of the cosmic process; and if this were the sum 
total of the Romanes Lecture, it could not be 
said to have carried us very far in the search 
for truth. But Huxley made an admission, 
which in the opinion of his critics vitiates his 
whole theory. He confessed that "cosmic 
evolution may teach us how the good and the 
evil tendencies of man may have come about; 
but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any 
better reason why what we call good is prefer- 
able to what we call evil than we had before." ^ 
Science, then, is incompetent to account for 
the great moral phenomenon — the distinction 
between right and wrong. Small wonder is it 
that Huxley in conversation with Ward, in 
1894, vigorously defended the argument for 
design, and added that "faulty as is the Chris- 
tian definition of Theism, it is nearer the truth 
than the creed of some agnostics who conceive 
of no unifying principle in the world." His 
theory of life as expounded in this lecture 
demands some such unity of purpose, and he 
was not without glimmerings, as he neared the 
end of his days, that the only reasonable 
ground of the unity is God Himself. 

^ Collected Essays: Evolution and Ethics, p. 80. 



[67] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

VI 

Huxley's views on the relation between 
science and religion were never left in obscurity. 
He believed the antagonism between them was 
factitious, fabricated on the one hand by 
religionists who confused theology with re- 
ligion, and on the other by narrow scien- 
tists who forgot that science dealt only with 
matter-of-fact phenomena. The heathen sur- 
vivals and the crass philosophies, under which 
true religion has so often been interred, aroused 
his ire. He rejoiced in the rupture, and hoped 
that the quarrel would never cease until 
science had discharged one of her most ben- 
eficent missions — relieving men from the bur- 
den of a false science imposed upon them in 
the name of religion. He held that the Holy 
Scriptures, if stripped of sentimental and mis- 
leading accretions, would favor this end, a view 
supported by the splendid tribute he paid the 
Bible, and by the significant fact that he yielded 
to his wife's influence and chose a religious 
education for his children. "Take the Bible 
as a whole, make the severest deductions which 
fair criticism can dictate, . . . and there still 
remains in this old literature a vast residuum 
of moral beauty and grandeur. . . . For three 
centuries this book has been woven into the 
life of all that is best and noblest in English 
history. . . . By the study of what other book 
[68] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

could children be so much humanized and made 
to feel that each figure in that vast historical 
procession files, like themselves, between two 
eternities, and earns the blessings or the curses 
of all time, according to its effort to do good 
and hate evil, even as they also are earning 
their payment for their work."^ 

The goal of progress was a matter on which 
Huxley had thought long and profoundly. He 
refers to the Homeric sadness which arises out 
of the conscious limitations of man, out of the 
sense of an open secret which we cannot pene- 
trate, wherein lie the quintessence of all re- 
ligions and the source of all that is truly 
catholic in their theologies. He looks forward 
to the maturity of the race, when there will be 
but one kind of knowledge, and one method of 
its acquirements; when science will have its per- 
fect work, and when ignorance, superstition, 
and their consequent evils will be finally 
abolished. This is the goal of progress as he 
conceived it, and he urges us toward it with 
luminous exhortations. His dread of any spec- 
ulation in definite spiritual directions forbade 
an adequate and worthy climax for this cosmic 
movement. When we interrogate him in 
Browning's words, — 

"You've seen the world, 
The beauty, the wonder, and the power, 

^ Quoted from Ainsworth Davis' T. H. Huxley (" English Men 
of Science" Series), p. 103. 

[69] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades. 
Changes, surprises, — and God made it all ! 
— For what ? . . . What's it all about ? 
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, 
Wondered at ? " ^ 

his answer is not couched in the terms of 
Haeckel's materiahstic monism, which regards 
all that is peculiar to man as an insignificant 
by-product of the evolutionary system, with 
neither divine Alpha nor Omega. Nor does he 
find it in that sense of vastness in the modern 
universe which estimates this planet and its 
inhabitants as an atom of dust on the crest of 
a high mountain. Rather does he take refuge 
with a school of scientific prophets, who, by 
the aid of mathematical calculations, predict 
that the process of nature, continually evolving, 
must ultimately issue in a perfect equilibrium 
of forces, implying the total cessation of change 
and culminating in universal death. 

Huxley expatiates at some length on this 
pessimistic destiny, and it is important that he 
should be represented in his own language: 
"The theory of evolution encourages no mil- 
lennial anticipations. If, for millions of years, 
our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some 
time, the summit will be reached and the down- 
ward route will be commenced." ^ A struc- 
tural deficiency is here discernible in his mental 

^ Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi (Poetical Works, Riverside 
edition v. 4, p. 80). 

2 Evolution and Ethics, p. 85. 

[701 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

nature. It frequently appears elsewhere, and 
its results run athwart much of his finest think- 
ing. It lay in the absence of those adventurous 
tentacles which grope for the spiritual meanings 
of phenomena. He had few positive and affirm- 
ative sympathies with these hidden realities. 
Principal Fairbairn once described Newman as 
"an agnostic baptized with religious emotion." 
The description is just; for Newman's religion 
was pillared on a great doubt and a great fear, 
— the doubt he had of God's free action in 
the world apart from an appointed and nec- 
essary agency in the Church; the fear he en- 
tertained of the corrosive influence of human 
reason in matters of faith. Huxley's agnosti- 
cism was less orientalized and subtle, but, like 
Newman's, it was inherent. Bold to reck- 
lessness elsewhere, he here manifested sur- 
prising timidity. To affirm a personal Deity, 
especially one who controlled the destiny of 
the world and of man, was more than he 
could allow. Newman vanquished his fears by 
enthroning dogma; Huxley confirmed his ob- 
liquity by enthroning agnosticism. 

A small book containing his favorite aphor- 
isms and reflections has recently been issued,^ 
and the impression these leave on the mind of 
the sympathetic reader is that he was seriously 
troubled by doubts of his own theory. His 
materialism was not without its misgivings. 

1 See Spectator, April 15, 1911, p. 553. 
[711 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

Indeed, he will not allow that he is a materialist. 
"The man of science who, forgetting the limits 
of philosophical inquiry, slides from these 
formulae and symbols into what is commonly 
understood by materialism, seems to me to 
place himself upon a level with the mathemati- 
cian who should mistake the X^s and F'5 with 
which he works his problems for real entities." 
But he never made any sacrifices to consist- 
ency; and while he puts aside materialism, he 
points out that there are still more terrible 
theories, and seems to uphold its possibility by 
threats. The rational grounds for belief, in his 
esteem, are often extremely irrational attempts 
to justify our instincts. We are to learn what 
is "true by setting aside all conclusions that can 
not be proved." "All truth in the long run is 
only common sense clarified." Then he some- 
what changes his position. The one end of 
learning the truth is that right may be done. 
That is the sole object of all knowledge. And, 
after all, the world is absolutely governed by 
ideas, very often by the wildest and most 
hypothetical ideas. He asserts, "in whichever 
way we look at the matter, morality is based 
on 'intuition' and feeling, not on reason." If you 
ask why the few in whom these intuitions are 
strong move and control the mass in whom 
they are weak, he answers the question by 
asking another: Why do the few in whom the 
sense of beauty is strong — Shakespeare, 
[721 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

Raphael, Beethoven — carry the less-endowed 
multitude away? The fact is not explained, 
but "genius as an explosive power beats gun- 
powder hollow." Such princes upset all cal- 
culations, and create their own constituency. 
But may not intuition and feeling be worthy 
of the acceptance and even the allegiance of 
men? Our assurance of free-will, of the benevo- 
lence of Deity, and of the highest elements 
of religion, morality, and beauty, depends on 
them. The appeal of Christ to these intuitions 
and feelings has convinced and carried men 
upward to renewed existence. As the Spec- 
tator remarks, the doubts of his own plan of 
thought which Huxley suggests are sufficient 
to form a creed. Where he found his moral 
assurance we cannot be debarred from find- 
ing our spiritual interpretation. And this wit- 
ness standeth sure, while "materialism fades 
and changes, and with its perpetual flux and 
welter of vibrations eludes us at every turn." 
Nor is the last word said by Huxley upon the 
unreasonableness of the skepticism opposed to 
these conclusions. For there is a distinction 
between doubt and skepticism, and Gladstone 
described it at some length when he said: 

"For doubt I have a sincere respect, but 
doubt and skepticism are different things. I 
contend that the skeptic is of all men on earth 
the most inconsistent and irrational. He uses 
a plea against religion which he never uses 
[731 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

against anything he wants to do or any idea 
he wants to embrace, viz., the want of 
demonstrative evidence. Every day and all 
day long he eats the dish he likes wdthout cer- 
tainty that it is not poisoned; he rides the 
horse without certainty that the animal will 
not break its neck; he sends out of the house 
a servant he suspects without demonstration 
of guilt; he marries the woman he likes with 
no absolute knowledge that she loves him; he 
embraces the pohtical opinion that he prefers, 
perhaps without any study at all, certainly 
without demonstrative evidence of its truth. 
But when he comes to religion he is seized with 
a great intellectual scrupulosity, and demands as 
a precondition of homage to God what every- 
where else he dispenses with, and then ends with 
thinking himself more rational than other 
people." 

We believe that both science and religion 
desire to express reality, and both have great 
realities to express. Religion, as well as science, 
has lived and will live by the certainty of its 
ideas, and these ideas are not "such stuff as 
dreams are made of," but sterling convictions 
which have shaped and transfigured the whole 
fabric of western civilization. Their embodi- 
ment in ecclesiastical and theological thought 
has suffered from the perils incident to human 
development. How could it be otherwise? 
Christianity during the two thousand years of 
[74] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

its existence has passed through many changes 
which appear to us to-day crude and barbaric. 
Yet, distorted and misappHed as it no doubt 
has been, it has met the varying needs of 
human nature, and become the companion of 
every human fate. It has instructed and ele- 
vated the ignorant, and at the same time 
proved the dehght and sheet-anchor of the 
learned. It is a vital and timeless force, ever 
adaptable to the continually changing and 
enlarging conceptions of life, and going before 
the loftiest ideals it authorizes. Its enduring 
principle of regeneration was never understood 
by Huxley, although he admitted that its ori- 
gin and steady persistence against all rivalries, 
was a profoundly interesting problem. He 
entertained the hope that the progress of 
accurate historical research would provide a 
solution. Such research has been made, and 
it has proceeded on well-defined lines ; but no 
solution such as he expected has been found. 
For many of us it was a superfluous quest, 
since the personality of Jesus Christ, in both 
history and experience, is fully retained, and 
will always remain the sole explanation of 
this wonderful revelation. Of course, for the 
mind which can discover no place for a Creator, 
and can see no destiny save cold annihilation, 
"the problem of Christ" will be a curious 
speculation rather than a mystery of divine 
love and grace. To us, however, the chief end 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

of man is not speculation for its own sake, but 
that we may glorify God and enjoy Him for- 
ever; and in a God-created and God-controlled 
universe it is the only conceivable and worthy 
end. Its realization in Christ has been the 
stupendous religious fact, for which there is no 
rational explanation except in a frank admis- 
sion of His claims. Huxley's consciousness of 
the difficulties involved in his views on hfe and 
destiny caused him to advocate a resolute front 
against the prospect of future nothingness. *' We 
are grown men, and must play the man" — 

"Strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 

He admits that a ray of light may perchance 
steal in upon the dreadful gloom: 

*'It may be that the giJfs will wash us down. 
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles." ^ 

The natures that will find comfort in this 
scanty outlook are few indeed, and later 
teachers of the evolution school have revolted 
against its dismal predictions. Mr. Fiske says, 
*'For my own part, I believe in the immor- 
tality of the soul, not in the sense in which I 
accept the demonstrable truths of science, but 
as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness 
of God's work." ^ The spirit that breathes in 

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 86. 

2 The Destiny of Man, p. 116. 

[76] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

these admirable words is truly refreshing. But 
Le Conte is more emphatic still. He holds 
that, without spirit — immortality — this in- 
creasingly beautiful cosmos, which has run its 
ageless course with manifest purpose and value, 
would be precisely as though it had never been 
— an idiot tale signifying and portending blank 
nothingness.^ 

VII 

Huxley's value to his generation was large 
and varied. He was an admirable pleader for 
the atmosphere in which science must live to 
prosper ; he knew the many ramifications of 
natural knowledge; and his original contribu- 
tions were diversified and multitudinous. In 
regard to the latter, no biological investigator of 
his period excelled him. He practically founded 
modern embryology ; reconstructed the classi- 
fication of organisms, and gave a renewed 
interest to the facts of anatomy. As an ornith- 
ologist, competent authorities placed him fore- 
most, the true position and relationships of the 
three groups of birds being for the first time 
disclosed by him. He explored every nook and 
corner of the animal kingdom, and returned 
richly laden with its treasures. Physiologists 
and biologists alone can estimate the results of 
his prodigious labors ; all that can be attempted 
here is to note a few of the landmarks of his 

^ Cf . Le Conte's Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, 
p. 329. 

[771 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

later life. The many important appointments 
he held, the fullness of his literary and public 
labors, the honors bestowed upon him, and the 
respect paid to his professional opinions by 
European and American scientists, afford abun- 
dant evidence of the hold he had upon his gen- 
eration. He was the world's premier professor 
in biology, President of the Royal Society, 
Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, a member 
of the first London School Board, trustee of the 
British Museum, corresponding member of 
nearly all scientific organizations, and a repre- 
sentative on several Government commissions. 
Degrees were lavished on him in later life. 
Edinburgh University led the way as early as 
1866, when Tyndall and Carlyle also shared her 
appreciation of the attainments of a remarkable 
trinity of men. Dublin followed in 1878; Oxford 
and Cambridge came last, in 1885 and 1891 re- 
spectively. It is generally known that Huxley 
might have received a title in recognition of his 
eminent services, but his opposition defeated 
the project. The sole claim to nobility which 
becomes a philosopher is the place he holds in 
the estimation of his fellow workers, who alone 
are competent to judge his merits. Newton 
and Cuvier lowered themselves, in his opinion, 
by accepting such distinctions. Like Grote, 
Carlyle, and Gladstone, he preferred to be known 
by the plain and unadorned name of Thomas 
Huxley. 

[78] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

Failing health compelled his retirement from 
oflBcial life in 1885. No sense of personal 
gratification could delude him into holding any 
position for a moment after reason and con- 
science indicated any incapacity to discharge 
its duties. He went to Oxford to receive the 
Doctorate of Civil Law in a melancholy mood. 
It was a sort of apotheosis coincident with his 
official decease. But he mistook himself if he 
supposed that such retirement would mean 
cessation from strife. He always succumbed 
to the lure of the fray, and it may be said of 
him, as of the charger in Job's drama, "he 
smelleth the battle afar off." He had fought 
with the press at Edinburgh, where the Witness 
accused him of advocating a debasing theory, 
standing in blasphemous contradiction to the 
biblical narrative and doctrine, and wondered 
why the vile and beastly paradox he advanced 
should not have excited the wrath of the audi- 
ence. It was an age of conflict, when men con- 
tended for their several positions with the zest 
of those who were sworn defenders of the citadel 
of Christian truth. Yet Huxley was more 
careful to avoid public criticism of religious 
opinion than some imagined; and Mivart, 
Roman Catholic though he was, went out of 
his way to send his son to Huxley's Kensington 
lectures. 

Many of these contentions have become so 
barren that it is difficult for us to realize the 
[79] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

fear and dismay they once excited. Huxley 
did not escape the perils of the swordsman any 
more than Bishop Wilberforce, Gladstone, or 
the rampant editor of the Witness. The 
Oxford prelate was not always "florid, fluent, 
and smilingly insolent," or distinguished for 
emptiness and unfairness. He was a truly 
great man who vitalized the Episcopal office, 
and left a lasting impression on the Church 
of England. His flippancy in an unguarded 
moment exposed him to the thrust of Huxley's 
trenchant blade, and one may be sure that the 
opportunity was not allowed to pass. But it 
was Sir Richard Owen who inspired the Wilber- 
force attack, and the duel was between two 
rivals in scientific interpretation, with an un- 
fortunate Church dignitary acting as the proxy 
of the elder one. "The voice was the voice of 
Jacob, but the hands were the hands of Esau." 
A more fortunate opponent than Gladstone 
could not have been found for Huxley's skillful 
strategy. The statesman used an agile and 
powerful intellect to defend theories which were 
not necessary to faith. He gave those theories 
such a large personal setting that the task of 
demolishing them was congenial to the scientist's 
habit of mind. In theology Gladstone had no 
history. What he was at thirty he remained at 
eighty, unchanged and unchangeable in an age 
of constant transition. Their passage at arms 
showed this, and placed the venerable Liberal 
[80] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

Prime Minister at a decided disadvantage. But 
it ended with a handsome postscript from Hux- 
ley: "My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone 
for his courteous withdrawal of one of the state- 
ments to which I have thought it needful to 
take exception. The familiarity with con- 
troversy . . . will have accustomed him to the 
misadventures which arise when . . . the but- 
tons come off the foils. I trust that any scratch 
which he may have received will heal as quickly 
as my own flesh wounds have done." ^ 

Whatever the merits or demerits of the fight 
waged in the last century, the chief result was 
the securing of that liberty for theology and 
natural science which is at once the cause and 
the consequence of intellectual progress. The 
policy of repression exercised by certain domi- 
nant factions began to weaken, and the un- 
fettered state of present inquiry in all spheres 
of knowledge can be traced, in part at any rate, 
to the period in which Huxley was an intrepid 
figure. Intellectual and moral integrity were 
his outstanding virtues. His absolute loyalty 
to truth made any sort of mental dishonesty 
intolerable. He drove his rational inquiry 
through the heart of any prevalent conceptions 
if he believed them erroneous. Fear of men 
was unknown to him, and he came to the office 
of the scientist with the conviction that he 
must be the sworn interpreter of nature in the 

1 Huxley's Collected Essays, Vol. IV p. 283. 
[811 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

high court of reason, let the personal conse- 
quences be what they might. If the situation 
demanded it, he dealt with Darwin, whom he 
reverenced as he did few others, with unhesi- 
tating candor. 

There has scarcely been a great physical truth 
whose universal acceptance has not been pre- 
ceded by scorn and persecution. Crushed and 
maimed in every onset, this futile opposition 
was as rampant though not so barbarous in the 
nineteenth century as in the time of Galileo. 
This attitude aroused in Huxley the formidable 
powers of a first-class fighting man. It for- 
mulated his resistance, and it also accentuated 
his errors. He experienced somewhat the force 
of the divine axiom that "they that take the 
sword shall perish with the sword." But, be- 
lieving as he believed with faith unfeigned that 
the welfare of the race in moral, economic, and 
industrial progress was absolutely conditioned 
by a thoroughly scientific education, it is not 
easy to perceive how he could have acted other 
than he did. Nevertheless, even to his com- 
patriots he was a man to be handled gingerly. 
He said, playfully of course, that the Meta- 
physical Society, which met in Red Lion 
Square, Holborn, was afraid to ask him to 
become a member — he might have been such 
a firebrand! Gladstone, Martineau, the Duke 
of Argyll, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dr. W. G. Ward, 
Father Dalgairns, and Cardinal Manning were 
[82] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

members, and Huxley joined them later, prov- 
ing by his conduct that the gladiator may still 
be a perfect gentleman. Even so, he could not 
forego a parting shot when the Society sus- 
pended its meetings. "It died of too much 
love, " was his wicked epitaph. 

vni 

This abounding sense of humor and biting 
sarcasm aided him when confronted with blind 
and foolish objections. On one occasion a rash 
cleric, who had only a meager acquaintance 
with natural history, attacked Darwinism with 
the enthusiasm of ignorance, and indulged in 
considerable merriment at Huxley's expense. 
Huxley made no reply whatever, whereupon 
the jocose author called his attention to the 
articles, and mockingly requested advice on the 
study of the questions involved. The pro- 
fessor's answer, probably written on a post- 
card, was all-sufficient: "Take a cockroach 
and dissect it." Yet his humor could be genial 
as well as satirical. At the end of one of his 
lectures he inquired if the students understood 
all he had been saying. One replied, "All, 
sir, save one part, during which you stood 
between me and the blackboard." "Ah," re- 
joined Huxley, "I did my best to make myself 
clear, but could not make myself transparent." 
On one occasion, after a meeting of the trustees 
[83] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

of the British Museum, Archbishop Benson 
helped Huxley on with his coat; and the Pro- 
fessor, in recounting the incident, said, "I felt 
quite overcome by this species of spiritual inves- 
titure." "Thank you. Archbishop," he re- 
marked; "I feel as if I were receiving the 
pallium." ^ St. George Mivart in his Remi- 
niscences'^ says that one evening after dinner, at 
which Huxley sat on his right hand, he turned 
to him for support on behalf of a plea for 
toleration. Huxley replied "No. I think vice 
and error should be extirpated by force if it 
could be done." Mivart was surprised, and 
said, "Then you rehabilitate Torquemada and 
others .f^" To which came the retort, "I think 
they were quite right in principle; they injured 
it by the way they carried it out." "But, 
surely," replied Mivart, "burning is a strong 
measure .f*" "Yes," said Huxley, "especially 
the smell." 

On Ward's first introduction to Huxley he 
expected to meet an irascible individual, a pedant, 
and a scoffer; instead, he found a personality of 
singular charm. External gifts of manner and 
presence, and powers of general conversation 
which would have ensured popularity to any 
mere man of the world, were combined with 
those higher endowments, and great breadth of 
culture, to none but an extraordinary person 

^ Nineteenth Century, Vol XL, p. 281. 
2 Ibid, Vol. XLII, p. 995. 

[84] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

could lay claim.^ According to the same writer 
the elements of gentleness and sympathy, which 
gave so much charm to his singular brilliancy, 
had become more noticeable in his later life. 
It is regrettable that Carlyle, the intellectual 
hero of Huxley's youth, and his friend in after 
years, is the only man who has the question- 
able distinction of having refused Huxley the 
offer of renewed friendship following upon a 
quarrel about natural selection. Quite a long 
time had elapsed since they met; but one day 
Huxley saw Carlyle crossing a London street, 
and at once rushed toward him for a handshake 
and a friendly word. The old man looked at 
him, and remarked, " You're Huxley, aren'tyou? 
The man that says we are all descended from 
monkeys," and turned and walked away.^ Our 
sympathies are not with Carlyle, who failed in 
his attempt to raise boorishness to the rank of 
a virtue. 

IX 

Huxley is sometimes referred to as a material- 
ist; but this, as we have seen, is incorrect, and 
he went to great pains explicitly to deny the 
charge. He says himself, in Science and 
Morals, that "physical science is as little 
atheistic as it is materialistic." The late 
Warden of Merton College affirms that, "with 
all his apparent leanings to materialism, and 

1 Nineteenth Century, Vol. XLI, pp. 274-278. 

^Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, Vol. I, p. 297. 

[85] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

vigorous avoidance of sentiment in reasoning, 
he inherited and cultivated the gift of philo- 
sophical imagination." He chose and pursued 
that perilous path which leads upward from 
ascertained facts into the sublimer regions of 
speculation. Here he remained enveloped in 
the mists of agnosticism, because he held that, 
for the improver of natural knowledge, skep- 
ticism is a duty and blind faith an unpardonable 
sin. For him doubt was better than credulity so 
long as he was pushing on to truth. The Cartesian 
philosophy helped to bring about this conserva- 
tion of uncertainty. "Give unqualified assent 
to no propositions but those the truth of which 
is so clear and distinct that they cannot be 
doubted." ^ This for Huxley was the first great 
commandment of science. But he adds that it 
was that sort of doubt which Goethe called 
"the active skepticism," whose sole aim is to 
conquer itself, and not that other sort the object 
of which is only to perpetuate itself as an excuse 
for idleness and indifference. Unfortunately 
Huxley never conquered his doubt. No shin- 
ing sun arose on his agnostic horizon; but there 
were ever and anon adumbrations and a mel- 
lowing twilight, a twilight not without hints 
of coming morn. 

After forty years of indefatigable toil, Huxley 
retired to his home at Eastbourne on the cliffs 
of England's southern coasts, still to breast the 

^ Huxley's Collected Essays. Vol. I, p. 169. 
[86] 



Thomas Henry Huxley 

storms and enjoy the love and confidence of 
friends and foes, who, however much they 
agreed with or differed from him, gave him 
their united and hearty esteem. He died on 
June 29, 1895. His gravestone bears three sig- 
nificant and touching hues written by his wife: 

"Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep; 
For still He giveth His beloved sleep : 
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best." 

This is beautiful resignation; but we believe 
that "He who giveth His beloved sleep" will 
assign to him eternal rest from earthly mis- 
giving and fear, and also an appropriate sphere 
of future activity. Surely an existence so nobly 
filled with higher forms of human effort cannot 
be doomed to the extinction of endless sleep! 
We think of Thomas Huxley still urging for- 
ward his undaunted way in pursuit of truth 
where truth is found in all its splendor and har- 
mony. Thus thinking, we can affirm: 

"Doubtless unto thee is given 

A life that bears immortal fruit 
In those great offices that suit 
The full-grown energies of heaven." ^ 

^ Tennyson's In Memoriam, XL. 



[87 



THIRD LECTURE 
JOHN STUART MILL 



"Laws should be adapted to those who have the 
heaviest stake in the country; for whom government 
means, not mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want 
and pain and degradation and risk to their own lives 
and to their children's souls." 

Lord Acton. 



JOHN STUART MILL 

THE period covered by the end of the 
eighteenth and the opening years of 
the nineteenth centuries was remarkable for the 
impetus given to society by new forces, new 
ideas, and new conceptions of life. Words- 
worth, then a youth of nineteen, was swept 
into the vortex; and in later times, notwith- 
standing his growing conservatism, he refers to 
the stirring and eventful epoch in the familiar 
lines of the Excursion : 

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
But to be young was very heaven." 

The mighty deeps were broken up, and flood- 
tides of emotion bore forward on their crest 
every kind of talent and genius in human 
affairs. The shock of this huge disturbance 
had scarcely died away, when there appeared 
a series of prophets, poets, teachers, reformers, 
and statesmen whose main burden was the 
reconstruction of the social order. The Roman 
Church resumed its plea for reactionary and 
traditional opinions. The sons of the new lib- 
eralism urged the same reconciliation of forces, 
but demanded that it rest on the basis of rad- 
ical reform. The defenders of hereditary rank 
and aristocratic privilege preserved, as best 
[911 



John Stuart Mill 

they could, the remnant of their feudal tenure. 
While France was the center from which the 
conflict waged, it extended throughout Europe 
and North America. 

John Stuart Mill was essentially a son of this 
movement, and his life and work are best ex- 
amined, at least in their initial stages, in the 
light of his affinities with the thinkers of the 
time. Frederic Harrison describes him as 
"the systematic product of a singularly system- 
atic school of philosophers";^ and, so far as his 
British intellectual ancestry is concerned, the 
description is correct. He imbibed the teach- 
ing of John Locke and David Hume, who, 
more than any other men, dispelled from the 
world of English thought the somber shadow 
cast upon it by the melancholy tendencies of 
Puritanism. He stood midway between the 
Benthamite and Spencerian types of philosophy, 
and was their most important link of connec- 
tion. He insisted on a logical deduction from 
observation and experiment, and challenged all 
social and political theories which could not 
justify themselves in the forum of reason. 
Whether for good or ill, his work betrays a 
unique blending of French and English ideas, 
and Walter Bagehot deems this combination 
Mill's great merit as a writer. In his logic, 
theories which before were widely apart, are 
found in juxtaposition; and thirteen are named 

^ Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, p. 272. 
[92] 



John Stuart Mill 

in the same sentence where one could hardly 
have comprehended their being coupled to- 
gether. The ancient and modern methods of 
scholastic or scientific inference were never 
before set so completely side by side, nor 
made so fully to illustrate one another. Such 
a task requires the delicate shades of expository 
art, and for this Mill was equipped by both 
gifts and culture. He inherited a philosoph- 
ical acumen from his father, and his residence 
in France had imparted the art of precise and 
graceful explanation. He seems to have been 
a compound of Bentham and Auguste Comte. 
In him the argumentation and sterling sense of 
the former were quickened and illumined by 
the idealism of the latter. 



The family of Mill came originally from the 
slopes of the Perthshire Grampians, a region 
noted for the growth of keen thinkers and 
ardent disputants. His father, James Mill, 
received the best education his frugal parents 
could procure and Scotland could offer. After 
graduating at Montrose Academy the elder Mill 
became a tutor in a private family, and moved 
with the household to Edinburgh, where he 
entered upon a course of study at the Univer- 
sity. Among the friends he found there were 
John Leyden, David Brewster, and Lord 
Brougham. At the age of twenty-nine he be- 
[93] 



John Stuart Mill 

gan his well-known literary career in London. 
Here he underwent severe struggles and hard- 
ships, which were finally relieved by his appoint- 
ment to the East India Company's service in 
that city, an office in which both he and his 
son spent their professional lives. When 
thirty-one he married Harriet Burrow, a lady of 
generous nature and refined tastes. The union 
was not a particularly happy one. Mrs. Mill 
was unsuited for his exacting intellectual dis- 
position, and her husband was too absorbed in 
his philosophical and literary pursuits properly 
to discharge the duties of domestic life. Their 
eldest child, John Stuart, was born on May 20, 
1806. From infancy he was subjected to a care- 
fully prepared and rigorous curriculum, every 
detail of which was predetermined, and the goal 
as carefully defined. The father never spared 
himself, and he had no notion of sparing others. 
His austerities were only ameliorated by the 
largeness of his public views, and his repressed, 
but undoubted sympathy with the causes which 
made for social betterment. He held the doc- 
trine that a sound organization would banish 
evils from the State, and that a thorough sys- 
tem of education would do the same for the 
individual. He displayed no enthusiasm in 
those stoical ambitions ; in his opinion, once 
the freshness of youth and satisfied curiosity 
had subsided, "human life was a poor thing at 
best." Passion and emotion were regarded by 
[94] 



John Stuart Mill 

him as forms of madness, and the intense was a 
byword of scorn. He advocated the restriction 
of the private affections and the expansion 
of altruistic zeal to the utmost. He accepted 
the dicta of his cult, that men are born alike, 
and that every child's mind is a tabula rasa 
on which experience registers its impressions. 
In harmony with this conception, education 
was, of course, the formative factor in deter- 
mining life and shaping character. It should 
begin with the dawn of consciousness, and 
be prosecuted without stint. How absolutely 
James Mill endorsed these views is evident 
from the methods he adopted in training his 
eldest son. 

There have been few more pathetic juvenile 
histories than that of John Stuart Mill. The 
story is a strange one; and were it not so well 
substantiated, doubts as to its accuracy would 
be legitimate. It has been received with feel- 
ings of amazement, mingled with those of sym- 
pathy and indignation. Despite the fact that 
his temperament was highly emotional and even 
religiously inclined, he was early compelled to 
face life from the purely intellectual standpoint. 
Before he was sufficiently mature to register a 
protest, his father forced him outside the pale 
of all sentiment, and charged him with the inso- 
lence of a philosophical system which had no 
limitations. Such hard and metallic treatment 
robbed the son of any opportunity to develop 
[95] 



John Stuart Mill 

and understand the romantic side of his nature. 
Many of the sorrows that beset his career can 
be traced to this well-nigh unpardonable error. 
He tells us in his autobiography that when he 
was two years old he was able to read; at three 
he commenced Greek; at seven he had gone 
through the whole of Herodotus, Xenophon's 
Cywpoedeia, the memorials of Socrates, part of 
Lucian, and some of the lives of the philoso- 
phers by Diogenes Laertius; at eight he knew 
the first six Dialogues of Plato. In addition to 
these classics, studied in the original, he was 
made to extend his course to the English his- 
torians and essayists, a knowledge of whom 
was held necessary to the completion of the 
astounding scheme. Robertson, Hume, Millar, 
Mosheim, M'Crie, and Sewell were read by 
this child before he had reached his tenth year. 
Macaulay's phenomenal precociousness was 
altogether outdone. Even so, his father was 
still dissatisfied, and thrust upon him further 
labors which were simply impossible. In our 
day, when the discipline of youth has been con- 
siderably relaxed, the prodigious achievements 
of young Mill may well appear incredible; but 
Professor Bain assures us that the amount of 
work done has been underestimated. At eight 
he was appointed schoolmaster to the younger 
members of the family, a post which he states 
was more educative to his mind than helpful to 
his manners. The Draconian father applied 
[96] 



John Stuart Mill 

his theories to the Httle Mills who were just 
out of the cradle, and vicariously operated upon 
them through the monitorship of their eldest 
brother. It is not an attractive picture; and to 
add to its painfulness, Jeremy Bentham offered 
his services in carrying out the scheme so far as 
John Stuart was concerned. He pledged him- 
self to see it through "by whipping or other- 
wise." To this the elder Mill replied, "I take 
your offer seriously, and we may perhaps leave 
him a worthy successor of us both." They do 
not appear to have regarded the child as a 
human being at all; but as a living peg on which 
to hang their system of education and exhibit its 
advantages to posterity. The differential cal- 
culus and other branches of the higher mathe- 
matics were assigned him before he was thirteen. 
Geometry, algebra, logic, Latin, treatises on 
scholasticism, and the study of the Org anon 
were included in the same period. He observed 
later that he profited little by the Posterior 
Analytics. Certainly loss was mingled with 
gain in this varied and astonishing program; 
but it was ruthlessly pushed forward, regardless 
of future mischief. Strangely enough young 
Mill was not so unhappy in all this as might be 
supposed. He became accustomed to his cap- 
tivity; his daily walks with his father, during 
which they discussed political economy, were 
more or less anticipated. These peripatetic 
discourses had to be reproduced in written 
[97] 



John Stuart M ill 

form on the following morning. A high stand- 
ard of clearness and correctness was enforced, 
and the results were palpable in those literary 
talents which were most useful to one who 
became so comprehensive a philosopher. He 
acquired habits which were much strength- 
ened in after life, and especially during his 
association with the youthful propagandists of 
the Utilitarian Society. These habits were 
"never to accept half solutions of difficulties as 
complete; never to abandon a puzzling ques- 
tion, but to return to it again and again, until 
it was manifest; never to allow obscure corners 
of a debated issue to remain unexplored be- 
cause they did not appear important; never to 
think he understood any part of a subject 
unless he understood the whole." ^ 

Whatever the youth's feelings were, his en- 
durance was beyond praise, and there is no hint 
that he faltered while passing through this 
premature forging process. He brought to it a 
splendid physique, a resolute will, and an awe 
of his father which made him obedient to his 
lightest word. He was encouraged by the ex- 
ample of those strong and wholesome charac- 
ters which had overcome formidable obstacles. 
This acquiescence, with the general plan for his 
advancement, profoundly influenced his after- 
life. His mind was disciplined, if not to per- 
fection, certainly to a high range of efficiency. 

^ Autobiography, p. 123. 
[98] 



John Stuart Mill 

And while many thinkers and several of his 
contemporaries were more eminent for original- 
ity and constructive talent, none surpassed 
Mill in the amplitude of his general knowledge, 
the diversity and scope of his intellectual pur- 
suits, and his invaluable faculty for fusing to- 
gether rich but fragmentary phases of thought. 
He understood, as few did, the importance of 
evidence, and developed those gifts of concen- 
tration which made him a mental analyst of the 
first order. A laudable and sincere ambition 
was kindled in him to follow in the footsteps of 
men who had consecrated themselves to the 
public good. These were valuable acquisitions, 
and, on the whole, it seems probable that the 
interminable round of study and effort was well 
adapted to his capacities. 

In his fifteenth year he won a brief respite, 
which was spent in the south of France. Freed 
from his father's overweening presence, sur- 
rounded by congenial society and in full view of 
the impressive scenery of the Pyrenees, it was 
here he felt the first warm rays which thawed his 
glacial youth. His subsequent familiarity with 
the French thought and language was the best 
outcome of this sojourn abroad. If he caught 
a little, though only a little, of the tendency to 
diffuseness of the French philosophers, he also 
gained their translucent style and wonderful 
readability. Before he returned to England, 
in 1821, he added zoology, chemistry, botany, 
[99] 



John Stuart Mill 

and metaphysics to the list of his acquirements, 
and found recreation in music and dancing. In 
1823 he entered the service of the East India 
Company, where his duties, though onerous, 
were not allowed to interfere with his literary 
work. The reading of Dumont's interpreta- 
tion of Benthamism in the Traite de Legislation 
effected an astounding change in Mill's outlook 
on life. He laid down the last volume with the 
feeling that he was literally "converted." "I 
now had opinions,'* he cried, "a creed, a doc- 
trine, a philosophy; in ohe among the best 
senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation 
and diffusion of which could be made the prin- 
cipal outward purpose of a life. And I had a 
grand conception laid before me of changes to 
be effected in the condition of mankind through 
that doctrine."^ To those who have regarded 
Mill as a cold and calculating rationalist, this 
spontaneous confession may be surprising. 
But if we reflect on the abnormalities that have 
been depicted, was it not to be expected.'^ Here 
was a very young man excessively nurtured in 
intellect and starved in emotion, who had sud- 
denly found mental and moral employment for 
his neglected sympathies. He preached imme- 
diately his radiant gospel of the greatest hap- 
piness of the greatest number. With all the 
ardor of a regenerate he turned to find others 
of a like persuasion. The Utilitarian Society 

^ Autobiography, p. 67. 
[100] 



John Stuart Mill 

was founded to embody these purposes; it 
consisted of young men more or less acquainted 
with Bentham, and who therefore might be the 
more readily imbued with the spirit and aims 
of his teaching. To many of these, both then 
and afterward, Mill was not so much a thinker 
or a political economist, as a prophet. "He 
had rare power of arguing and analyzing"; but 
what is still more uncommon, he had "an 
equally rare kind of contagious enthusiasm, 
which influenced a multitude of minds, and 
made them believe as he did."^ 

From the period of this awakening can be 
dated his productive work. After a prolonged 
course of reading he began to contribute to 
the Traveller, the Chronicle, the Westminster 
Review, and other organs of philosophical radi- 
calism, and in 1825 he edited Bentham's work 
on Evidence. These preliminary ventures in 
authorship considerably improved his style. 
He showed that microscopic ability which 
detects the minutest breach or incoherence in 
the tissue of opposed reasoning, and also a 
clear conception of what he himself meant to 
convey. His attitude impresses the reader as 
earnest and convinced, and withal gentle and 
modest. But this halcyon state was soon dis- 
turbed. He began to drift from the certainty 
of his beliefs, and in the autumn of 1826 a 
painful reaction followed on his new-found yet 

^ Bagehot's Essay on Mill {Works, Vol. V, p. 417). 
[101] 



John Stuart Mill 

short-lived joy. His mutilated childhood, com. 
bined with his sanguine attempt to establish 
reason as the sole guide of life, thus effecting a 
social and economic revolution, were revenged 
by a series of dark and depressing experiences 
which well-nigh overwhelmed him. Psycholog- 
ically they indicated the backward swing of 
the pendulum from his untimely zeal. Actually 
they centered around certain abnormal obses- 
sions which distract the disappointed and dis- 
enchanted spirits whose ideals have melted 
into thin air. He vexed himself over the pos- 
sible exhaustibility of musical combinations, 
and when rid of this annoyance suffered from 
others equally futile and wearying. Then 
came defiance against the gods in whose ser- 
vice he had been commandeered. Sudden mis- 
givings and agonizing doubts flashed upon him, 
which he compares to a Methodist "conviction 
of sin." His implicit and complacent trust in 
his philosophical evangel was rudely shattered, 
and his mission to upraise a world of which 
he was woefully ignorant was abandoned in 
despair. For an interval everything on which 
he had depended tottered and seemed about 
to fall. He deeply realized that, if all his objects 
in life could be attained at that moment, the 
result would give him no lasting satisfaction. 
He says with melancholy emphasis, "At this 
my heart sank within me; the whole foundation 
on which my life was constructed fell down. 
[102] 



John Stuart M ill 

All my happiness was to have been found in the 
continual pursuit of this end. The end had 
ceased to charm; and how could there ever 
again be an interest in the means? I seemed 
to have nothing left to live for." These gloomy 
reflections prostrated him. He quotes Cole- 
ridge's lines from Dejection as exactly describ- 
ing his case: 

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, 
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, 
Which finds no natural outlet or relief 
In word, or sigh, or tear." ^ 

Some one has compared Condorcet to a vol- 
cano covered with snow. To a certain extent 
the comparison holds true of Mill; and this was 
the first eruption, to be followed by others even 
more destructive. The ill-regulated fires be- 
neath at last blazed forth in unexpected and 
disastrous ways. What availed his father's 
regimen and the bold and heartless efforts to 
stifle in him the higher qualities of humanity? 
The unhappy sequel could scarcely have been 
other than it was ; we may perhaps repress 
ourselves, but no one else can attempt it with 
impunity. He recovered himself by reading 
Marmontel's Memoires; and a little later the 
poetry of Wordsworth came to him with the 
strength and comfort of a revelation. Over 
the first book he shed tears, it gave fluidity to 

^ Autobiography, p. 134. 
[103] 



John Stuart Mill 

the deeper feelings of his soul; while the second 
showed him the place which feeling occupies, 
not only in the social relationships, but as a 
guide to the understanding of the human heart. 
He now saw that pleasure did not depend on 
an opposition of interests between men. The 
static theory of a limited amount of happiness 
was not in harmony with the facts of life, since 
one man's pleasures do not necessarily interfere 
with those of another. This was an important 
moment in his life — the moment when he real- 
ized, by Wordsworth's aid, that independent 
yet real pleasure is afforded by the contempla- 
tion of nature and of the heart of man. He 
began to live the life of emotion, and, treading 
this unaccustomed road, for which he had re- 
ceived so little preparation, it is not astonish- 
ing that he fell into a snare. 

His introduction to the well-known Mrs. 
Taylor resulted in an intimacy which separated 
Mill from his highest self, and caused division 
in his family as well as anxiety to his friends. 
Despite continued remonstrance he persisted in 
this detrimental compact. The Nemesis which 
followed so indiscreet an episode exacted a 
heavy toll from the man, his work, and his 
influence. After twenty years the death of 
the forbearing husband left his widow free to 
marry her admirer. But the bitterest conse- 
quences were destined to fall upon Mill's patient 
and long-suffering mother, whom he does not 
[104 1 



John Stuart Mill 

once mention in his autobiography. He dis- 
played toward this unfortunate lady and her 
children an implacable spirit of retaliation for 
their supposed neglect of his belated bride, 
and on his part arose an immovable reserve 
which he never relaxed. This deplorable aver- 
sion destroyed the peace of the domestic circle 
in which he had been an affectionate son and an 
open-handed brother. Miss Taylor, the grand- 
daughter of Mrs. Taylor, has urged all that can 
be said on behalf of Mill and his wife. She 
naturally is anxious to vindicate his conduct; 
but candor compels her to admit that "Mill's 
letters to his own family are, too many of them, 
painful, though strangely interesting, reading. 
He cannot, by the most wounding reproaches, 
shake their faith in him as a 'great and good 
man.' He seems to endeavor to do this, but 
fails. They recognize that he is cruel and in- 
sulting to them, and they suffer acutely; but 
their affection is as invincible as his resentment. 
It is wonderful to see a whole family thus lov- 
ing and enduring. Not one bitter word is 
flung back to him. One sees that he reigns 
in all their hearts. A marvel of cruelty; 
yet how deep and rich must the nature be 
that can so reign in spite of all ! As one 
reads one feels less anger with him than deep 
love and admiration for those brave women 
who seem to consider in each scornful word 
only the wound from which it springs, and 
[105] 



John Stuart Mill 

which they perpetually seek to find and 
heal."^ 

The views of two eminent critics, belonging 
to widely different schools, may be cited here. 
Lord Morley described Mill years ago as "true 
to his professions, tolerant, liberal, unselfish, 
single-minded, high, and strenuous."^ Sir Wil- 
liam Robertson Nicoll, in a recent review of 
Mill's Letters in the British Weekly, affirms that, 
while there was nothing technically immoral in 
the Taylor incident, "it was selfishness in its 
purest or impurest form, it turns many of 
Mill's books to folly . . . and was a sad and 
sorry entanglement." Morley 's eulogy is too sil- 
very; but it may be subjected to revision when 
the promised Life of Mill appears. Certainly 
the biographer of Gladstone cannot allow Miss 
Taylor's remarks to pass without notice. Those 
now living who knew Mill personally dwell with 
one accord on his goodness of nature and devo- 
tion to the public service. Nor can it be 
doubted that for sagacity of mind, political and 
social fervor, and substantial contributions to 
economic reforms, he will always be rightly 
esteemed. 

Following the separation from his family, 
Mill and his wife withdrew almost entirely 
from society. They made their home near 
Avignon, and the death of Mrs. Mill was the 

1 Letters of John Stuart Mill: Introduction, Vol. I, p. 46. 

2 Miscellanies (fourth series), p. 146. 

[106 1 



John Stuart Mill 

crowning calamity which severed him alto- 
gether from England. He dedicated his essay 
On Liberty to her memory, declaring that in 
this, as in many other of his writings, she was 
a partner in their projection and execution. 
After a brief illness he died at Avignon on May 
8, 1873. His decease, which came suddenly, 
created a deep sense of loss in the intellectual 
life of Britain, France, and America. Few 
thinkers exercised more influence or inspired so 
much personal attachment among those who 
formed the inner retinues of philosophy and 
social betterment. "A strong, pure light has 
gone out, the radiance of a clear vision and a 
beneficent purpose. We have lost a great 
teacher and example of knowledge and virtue." 
So wrote his greatest living disciple, and he ex- 
pressed the sentiments of a distinguished coterie 
of thinkers and literary masters. 

II 

Mill's writings are not collections of desul- 
tory remarks; they are orderly and systematic 
discussions on absorbing themes which permit 
no deviations. Their beginnings have reference 
to their conclusions, and almost every part 
has some relation, and frequently a close one, 
to most other parts. Subjects like metaphysics, 
logic, and political economy will not brook out- 
side interference; the whole time and strength 
of a thinker and a scholar must usually be given 
[107] 



John Stuart M ill 

to these jealous mistresses. Yet Mill wrote his 
books when he was a laborious man of business 
who had difficult and exhausting duties to per- 
form. When the circumstances of their produc- 
tion are fully known, their meritorious character 
is increased. 

In his philosophy he defines matter as "the 
permanent possibility of sensation," and mind 
as the "permanent possibility of feeling." The 
so-called primary truths or innate ideas are only 
habits of mind which time and repetition have 
rendered irresistible. Experience is the sole 
source of knowledge, and the mind derives its 
entire fund of materials through the senses; 
a priori and intuitive elements of every kind 
are absolutely rejected; the mind contributes 
nothing out of itself to the structure of knowl- 
edge. Mill went so far as to deny the prin- 
ciple of contradiction. We are not even sure 
that we are not sure. When Hume con- 
ceded the necessary truth of the axioms of 
Euclid, Mill rebelled against the concession, 
and avowed that "there might be another 
planet in which two and two make five." Ac- 
cording to him, sensations and feelings are the 
component parts of experience and also the 
units of the mental life. "My mind is but a 
series of feelings," he remarks, "a thread of 
consciousness, however supplemented by be- 
lieved possibilities of consciousness, which are 
not, though they might be realized." Empha- 
[108] 



John Stuart Mill 

sis is laid on the association of ideas by means 
of which the mind is furnished with the falsely 
termed "intuitions" or "necessary truths." 
He would not admit the existence of a con- 
scious self as a centrality in itself; the funda- 
mental ego was a delusion, and consisted of a 
succession of feelings, and psychical states. 
Although Mill disliked the inference and tried 
to avoid it, these views were closely aflBliated 
with necessitarianism. "An act of will," quot- 
ing from his standpoint, "is a moral effect which 
follows the corresponding moral causes as cer- 
tainly and invariably as physical effects follow 
their physical causes." In these statements, 
which cover Mill's general attitude toward the 
vital problems of human existence, one cannot 
fail to notice his assumptions in the use of cer- 
tain words such as "background," "succession," 
and the like. In fact, his terminology is fertile 
in controversies because of its looseness, a loose- 
ness which has been banished from the more 
critical philosophies of our own time. 

Despite the qualified support of Spencer and 
Leslie Stephen, this attack on the integrity and 
reality of mind as the nexus of personality has 
now largely spent its force. It attempted to 
undermine the intelligent basis for experience, 
notwithstanding that on experience the Utilita- 
rians rested their whole case. From it alone 
they endeavored to deduce the laws and neces- 
sities of the mental and moral life. The process 
[ 109 ] 



John Stuart Mill 

reminds one of Hogarth's caricature of the man 
intent on sawing off his rival's sign, while he 
himself is perched on the outer edge oblivious 
of the coming crash. No satisfactory explana- 
tion is given of the unity of consciousness 
which is presupposed in every form of mental 
activity. Apart from that unity, such self- 
evident functions of mind as discrimination 
and combination are altogether impossible, and 
the mind itself, reduced to a mere series of feel- 
ings, is destroyed as a real agent. Mill seems 
to ignore the fact that any rational experience 
directly implies a conscious unitary subject. 
A further defect in his system is its leaning 
toward, if not its direct association with, the 
determinism to which reference has already 
been made. For if cause and effect obtain in 
the moral realm as in the physical, a mortal 
blow is given to ethical freedom, and personal 
responsibility is annulled. Professor Sheldon 
has demonstrated how both Mill and Spencer, 
in their oscillations between materialism and 
idealism, have frequently been compelled to rec- 
ognize that personality the existence of which 
they sought to disprove. For an instance of 
this, take the admission of Mill: "There is 
a bond of some sort among all the parts of 
the series, . . . and this bond constitutes my 
ego." As Sheldon points out, the "bond of 
some sort" is the trap-door which Mill unwit- 
tingly opened in the floor of his own philos- 
[110] 



John Stuart M ill 

ophy, through which his principal tenet 
promptly disappeared.^ 

The qualitative distinction between one form 
of gratification and another was a further and 
fatal error in the Utilitarian system, and also a 
virtual challenge of its entire ethical position. 
For Bentham push-pin was as good as poetry, 
provided it afforded equal pleasure. But Mill 
could not go so far as this; he rated some 
pleasures higher than others. Indeed, the intel- 
lectual pleasures made the strongest appeal to 
him : it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied 
than a fool satisfied.^ We heartily echo the 
plea; but Mill could not make it and remain 
a consistent Utilitarian. It requires a moral 
sense to determine what pleasures are high and 
what are low, and to differentiate between the 
Socratic and the foolish pursuits. His obser- 
vation also involves the displacement of pleas- 
ure as the standard and end in itself. It is 
interesting to note that Paley was the first 
teacher who used the Utilitarian philosophy as 
a basis for Christian ethics. His system was 
harmful, and has been rightly called "other- 
world selfishness." But while thoroughly dis- 
counted by modern theologians, it still sways 
the average map. to a regrettable extent. He 
defined virtue as the doing of good to mankind 

^ See Professor Sheldon's admirable work on Unbelief in the 
Nineteenth Century. 

2 Mill's Utilitarianism, pp. 11 ff. 

[Ill] 



John Stuart Mill 

in obedience to the will of God and for the 
sake of everlasting happiness. Thus, while virtue 
springs from self-seeking, its sanction is in the 
will of God allied with future reward or punish- 
ment. Utilitarianism proper differs from Paley- 
ism on the one question of the sanction. Its 
ethics are never a matter of obligation, but are 
absolutely governed by selfish and social con- 
siderations. Even the altruistic aspects are 
caused by self-love, and the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number is adjusted to this main 
position. When Bentham, who was given to 
generosity, was asked how in such actions he 
could be self -centered, his reply was that "he 
was a selfish man whose selfishness happened to 
take the form of benevolence." In another 
passage he says, "Self-regard alone will serve 
for diet, although sympathy is very good for 
dessert." 

For Mill the problem was more difficult, and 
he was not quite so assured on the issue. He 
knew no reason why the general happiness was 
desirable, except that each person desired his 
own happiness. Each person's happiness was a 
good to that person, and the general happiness 
a good to the aggregate of persons. Carlyle 
chuckled over this lame logic, and revealed its 
absurdity by a characteristically vigorous anal- 
ogy. "It is," he says, "as if we were to argue 
that because each pig desires for himself the 
greatest amount of a limited quantity of pigs' 
[112] 



John Stuart Mill 

wash, each necessarily desires the greatest quan- 
tity for every other and for all." Later Util- 
itarians, without any admiration for Carlyle's 
somewhat uncouth retort, have felt equally dis- 
satisfied with Mill's reasoning. They renounce 
the dogma that personal pleasure is the one 
desirable thing, and urge that we ought to aim 
at universal happiness according to reason. 
They do not, however, sufficiently explain the 
authority of reason or why we should obey its 
behests. Leslie Stephen toyed with the notion 
that happiness is the end, and that the happi- 
ness of the individual and that of others nor- 
mally coincide; yet they are different, and we 
can never be sure they are one and will follow 
the same path. But what if the end is not prop- 
erly described as happiness ? Suppose it is 
well-being or good.^^ Stephen himself suggests 
that the connection between the individual and 
social good is not sentiment, but a matter of 
reasoning. On the ground that man is a rational 
being, incapable of finding satisfaction in grati- 
fied feeling, capable only of self-realization in a 
common good, we are justified in setting aside 
all arguments based on the comparison of pleas- 
ures. Having done so much as this, we can 
appeal with confident directness to man's sense 
of duty. The emotional nature in men furnishes 
no ground of authority for ethics. The rational 
nature does so, and does it in all realms. When 
we say to a man, "This is right," we cannot 
[1131 



John Stuart Mill 

invariably add, "This will be for your happi- 
ness"; but we can affirm, "It is reasonable and 
obligatory." It may entail suffering and de- 
privation, yet it must be obeyed at all hazards. 
Apart from his rational self, which is essentially 
social, there could be no such obligation, no 
"thou shalt" or "thou shalt not," and no 
morality as now accepted and built upon by 
civilized society. ^ Though the English Utilita- 
rians have been discredited in their own circle, 
this should not blind us to the wide acceptance 
of their views by thoughtless multitudes who 
know no philosophy, but who eagerly seize upon 
hedonistic teachings as an excuse for personal 
advantage and self-indulgence. Utilitarian doc- 
trines have received another and less reputable 
application in our present revel of so-called 
prosperity. Many who never heard of Ben- 
tham, Hume, and the Mills make pleasure the 
sole end of being ; and the madness of this pur- 
suit has already inflicted widespread injury and 
loss upon the American and English peoples. 
Any creditable exposition of the fundamental 
weakness of this vaunted policy is a grateful 
resistance against a prevalent evil whose rav- 
ages must be checked or our racial value will 
decrease. 

The age of Mill, as already noted, was one of 
intellectual and political unrest, a time of doubt, 
perplexity, and hesitation. Thinkers were prin- 

1 See Muirhead's Ethics, p. 157. 
[114] 



John Stuart Mill 

cipally concerned to discover the meaning of 
the moral code under which they lived, and the 
authority which lay behind it. Finding nothing 
save contradictions, the Benthamites resolved 
to begin afresh, and their unflinching applica- 
tion of reason led them to a complete abandon- 
ment of the current ethical systems. Thus 
deprived of the assistance of the past, they nat- 
urally concentrated attention on themselves as 
the one indisputable reality. Here it was they 
met an adverse fate, because they made a mis- 
leading and unworthy reckoning of human 
nature. This doomed them to failure, as it has 
also seriously damaged those theological sys- 
tems which have been guilty of the same error. 
Their ambition rightly to interpret the peren- 
nial problem of man, his meaning and purpose 
in the world, was a laudable one; but their low 
and distorted notions concerning him thwarted 
its fulfilment. 

Jeremy Bentham gave his attention to juris- 
prudence, James Mill centered on psychology, 
John Stuart Mill expounded a new political 
economy. But behind these efforts the be- 
littling estimate of their fellow creatures crip- 
pled their main enterprises ; and while their 
work has borne fruit in many directions, it 
warns us that a dignified and sufficient doctrine 
of man's essential nobility must lie at the foun- 
dation of all speculation or action which proposes 
the betterment of the race. They shared in the 
[1151 



John Stuart Mill 

practical drift of British philosophy, which bore 
traces of the national temperament and was 
generally averse to any thinking that was 
not pragmatic in its tendency. They rendered 
yeoman service by bringing man back to him- 
self, and their domestic principles made Util- 
itarianism an effective instrument of political 
reform. They assumed the equality of all men, 
and based their calculations upon that assump- 
tion. In nations dominated by caste and privi- 
lege, such a principle was specially welcome. It 
was this advocacy of equal rights, and not their 
contention that the end is pleasure, which se- 
cured many social and legislative advantages. 

In the nineteenth century the stream of 
reforming thought was swollen by three great 
currents which flowed into it. These were the 
ethical, the metaphysical, and the scientific. 
They arose at different times; and in Germany 
and France, as well as in Britain and America, 
they gave an almost unprecedented significance 
to the era in which they found their confluence. 
The first began in Sensationalism, eddied in 
Utilitarianism, and was swept forward by the 
pressure of new truths the other two contained. 
James Mill and his son gave ethical Utilitarian- 
ism its authoritative form; but, despite this, it 
steadily dwindled, and, after the death of John 
Stuart, ceased to be a large factor in individual 
or social ethics. The system which regarded 
the world of humanity as an aggregate of de- 
[1161 



John Stuart M ill 

tached units, a collection of mere individuals, 
with nothing in common save their natural 
sensuous necessities, who repelled each other 
by their selfish greed, was an offense against 
the highest instincts of our being and led to 
naked naturalism. Political economy sup- 
planted ethics, psychology outgeneraled meta- 
physics, and religion wallowed in the slough of 
self-desire. Carlyle sturdily rebuked these de- 
fections. He testified to the presence of God 
in the spirit of man, and looked upon this life 
through the transfiguring light of another and 
a loftier world. Penetrating the husk of time, 
he saw that eternity was here and now, "a 
tranquil element underlying the heated antag- 
onisms of man's existence." "This theory," he 
exclaimed, speaking of Utilitarianism, "should 
make us go on all fours and lay no claim at all 
to the dignity of being moral." Within its con- 
fines man had no history as he had no future, no 
power either of ascent or descent. He was 
simply a human animal glutted with present 
demands and the efforts to satisfy them. It 
presented no ideals which could raise man above 
his natural selfhood or lead him to sacrifice the 
lower for the higher. He was pitiably reduced 
to an object, a thing affected by other things as 
they pained or pleased him, and acting, like any 
other object, in obedience to motives that had 
an external origin in the world of sense. These 
were the maunderings which provoked Carlyle's 
[117] 



John Stuart Mill 

ire. "Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue 
but some Passion; some bubble of the blood, 
bubbling in the direction others profit by? . . , 
If what thou namest Happiness be our true 
aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity 
and sound Digestion man may front much. 
But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are 
the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the 
Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us 
build our stronghold: there brandishing our 
frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense 
to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things 
he has provided for his Elect! "^ 

In Germany Hume's appeal to the world of 
the five senses had long ceased to charm reflec- 
tive minds. A noble succession of poets and 
philosophers emulated one another in brush- 
ing aside the conclusions of the empiricists. 
They demolished the Deism which encouraged 
notions of an absentee God, and reinvested His 
universe with the splendors of a spiritual sig- 
nificance. The infinite and finite elements in 
man and nature were reiterated by Kant and 
Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel. 
Metaphysics were reestablished upon a larger 
and firmer basis, psychology took a subordinate 
place, and the entire creation was viewed by 
them as pulsating with the mystery and majesty 
of endless life and purpose. In England Words- 

^ Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Chap. VII, p. 112, Edinburgh 
edition. 

[1181 



John Stuart Mill 

worth and Browning joined with Carlyle in 
directing this cleansing ideahsm toward popu- 
lar channels. Later thinkers, such as the 
brothers Caird and T. H. Green, expounded and 
supplemented Hegelianism, imparting to it the 
warmth and directness of their own moral 
enthusiasm. Lotze's monumental achieve- 
ments, which combine the best features of his 
predecessors, complete the history of this second 
current in the stream of modern thought, to 
which also the kindred religious philosophy of 
James Martineau contributed, coinciding with 
the more cosmic range of the German master. 
Again, the advent of evolution, with its 
immense range of biological facts, on which 
Spencer built his synthetic philosophy, was 
inimical to the Utilitarian degradation of man. 
The defects of Spencer's teaching were many 
and obvious, and they have been trenchantly 
handled by Professor Bowne. But one thing 
that teaching did: it showed conclusively that 
man was not an isolated unit; that he had a 
princely inheritance from an interminable past, 
whose recesses were beyond discernment, and 
whose dauntless energies were concentrated in 
him. More than this, an equally irresistible 
energy propelled him toward an infinite future 
whose possibilities challenged imagination. 
The two organic ideas of evolutionary philoso- 
phy, which were the solidarity of the race and 
its vital union with all created phenomena, 
[119] 



John Stuart Mill 

crushed the stark individualism of the school 
of Mill. 

While by the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury Utilitarianism was absorbed in the gen- 
eral stream of philosophy, John Stuart Mill's 
political economy has persisted to the present 
hour. The subject had already been very ably 
dealt with in detail by Adam Smith and Ricar- 
do; but no writer before Mill had surveyed it 
with anything like such catholicity or sympa- 
thy. No one had shown with the same com- 
prehensiveness and fascinating comparison "the 
relation which the different parts of the science 
bore to each other; still less had any one so 
well explained the relation of this science to 
other sciences and to knowledge in general."^ 
He brought to this eminent field all his peculiar 
powers; and while the book possesses little 
originality, it banishes the idea that the "dis- 
mal science" must needs be held in a narrow- 
minded or pedantic way. 

Indeed, Mill's receptivity and varied treat- 
ment laid him open to the charge of inconsist- 
ency, and his critics pointed to the excited 
emotions which frequently dictated his dis- 
course. Abstract dogmas on unlimited indi- 
vidualism were followed by an idealism which 
nullified them. He forsook logical order to 
dilate upon the golden prospects of a millennial 
future. Mill acknowledged the justice of the 

^ Bagehot's Essay on Mill (Works, Vol. V, p. 415). 
[1201 



John Stuart Mill 

criticism, and explained his lapse by attributing 
these ideals to Saint-Simon, the distinguished 
philosopher who was more or less prominent in the 
politics of his country. Professor Cousin of the 
Sorbonne and Auguste Comte aided Saint- 
Simon in deflecting Mill from orthodox Ben- 
thamism. The founder of Positivism combined 
with his reasoning on economics a serious at- 
tempt to expand the sociology of his day into 
a more coordinated form. Mill reveals the 
results of his intercourse with these lucid and 
persuasive writers, whose precise and graceful 
explanations were extremely attractive to him. 
But his gifts for weaving diversified matter into 
a unified whole were embarrassed by the wealth 
of his material. Either he lacked the reflective 
strength which could adequately deal with his 
enormous knowledge, or else he could not extri- 
cate himself from his inherited materialism. 
He stood at the crossroads where fierce winds 
blew from every quarter; but he stood so 
weighted down with his father's creed that no 
particular breeze could bear him along. The 
strange intermingling of Scotch common sense 
and Gallican political rapture, to which refer- 
ence has been made, colored many of his utter- 
ances, and caused men of opposite parties to 
appeal to these diverse elements in support of 
their widely different theories. Even the social- 
ists of our day and not without some show of 
reason have laid claim to him. 
[121] 



John Stuart M ill 

This universality may help to account for 
his monarchical influence. All students of 
political economy during his day began with 
Mill, and went only to other writers for con- 
firmation of his views. Mr. Bagehot states 
that they saw the science through his eyes, 
and that his preeminence among his contempo- 
raries was so complete as to be at times of 
doubtful benefit. Mill had been taught to look 
upon labor as painful, and economic effort as 
belonging to the disagreeable; but John Ster- 
ling and other friends showed him that the 
pleasures involved far outweighed the pains. 
A new ideal of social progress possessed him, and 
he made plans for its realization. He speaks of 
political economy and physical science as though 
no others existed, and for him political economy 
had become moral science because all social, 
political, psychical, and moral considerations 
influence the creation of wealth. His father 
drew an analogy between the political economy 
of the State and the domestic economy of the 
family. The first embraced everything relative 
to public affairs while the second included all 
things of a private character. The last was a 
miniature of the first, and the State should be 
regulated on a domestic basis of equality of 
work and profit. 

John Stuart Mill went farther, and regarded 
political economy as "the science relating to 
the moral or psychological laws of the produc- 
[ 122 ] 



John Stuart Mill 

tion and distribution of wealth." ^ Mental and 
moral phenomena are thus brought within the 
scope of economic inquiry. He also traces the 
laws of society from the concerted efforts of 
men for the production of wealth. His purpose 
in writing was to give a new setting to the teach- 
ings of Ricardo and Adam Smith. Much that 
is best in these writers is absorbed by him and 
reinterpreted in a more attractive way. Not 
a little of the merit of the work, however, lies 
in his special contributions on the themes of 
society and civilization. Many modern works 
on social problems bear marked traces of his 
method of treatment and of his opinions. It 
may be said that, under the influence of the 
Comtian philosophy, he elevated political econ- 
omy above the phenomena of environment, and 
set it forth as a new species of idealism. After 
his masterly treatment of the science, it was 
taken from the region of mere abstraction and 
given practical form and applicability for con- 
crete life. 

It would be beside the question to discuss at 
any length Mill's Logic, as books of such a 
nature do well, provided they serve their day 
and generation. This his Logic did, quite as 
well as Whately's, and the temporary influence 
of its almost universal scope was enormous. 
Grote wrote in the Westminster Review as long 

^ See Professor Patten's Development of English Thought, pp. 
323 fip. 

[ 123 1 



John Stuart M ill 

ago as January, 1866, and termed it "the most 
important advance in speculative theory which 
the century had witnessed." This verdict has 
since undergone material modification, and so 
eminent an authority as the late Professor 
Stanley Jevons affirms that the inconsistencies 
of the book show Mill's mind to be essentially 
illogical. But no one will deny that seldom in 
the history of philosophy have two books so 
learned, so thorough, and so far-reaching been 
written with greater scholarship, more skilful 
capacity, or higher aims. Upon the Logic as 
much as upon the Political Economy and the 
essay On Liberty Mill's greatness as a thinker 
and writer must continue to rest. And while 
the subjects with which they deal are too full 
of the contentions and differences brought about 
by the growth of knowledge and the necessities 
of change to enable any man to be a permanent 
authority upon them, assent will be given to 
some of Mill's conclusions for many years to 
come.^ 

Ill 

Social and religious questions form an inte- 
gral part of Mill's philosophy; indeed, they 
occupy a paramount place in the teaching of 
most nineteenth -century leaders of thought. 
That three such leaders as Mill, Carlyle, and 
Newman should have lived at the same time 

J- Bagehot's Essay on Mill (Works, Vol. V, pp. 412-417). 
[124] 



John Stuart Mill 

is, to Leslie Stephen, a remarkable occurrence. 
All were philosophers after a fashion ; they 
sought the same end in the good of society ; 
but each attempted its achievement in very dif- 
ferent ways. Leaving Newman out of account, 
the contrast is between Mill and Carlyle. The 
former differed from the latter in that he was 
the studied product of a school to whose ideas 
he gave a new development and application. 
While Carlyle hurled accusations against soci- 
ety to the very end. Mill, who was supposed 
at the first to occupy the same platform, 
became the prophet of better things, and 
sought to improve the condition of the masses 
Carlyle despised. Two great moral beliefs are 
indispensable for the work of a teacher or re- 
former: he must believe in the reality of his 
message, and he must also believe in its accept- 
ability. It was the secret of Carlyle's tragedy 
that he held the first and not the second; he had 
a Calvinistic depth of conviction concerning the 
truths he uttered, but, alas! he had no confi- 
dence in men's sure response — they were mostly 
fools. When Mill wrote his Letters on The 
Spirit of the Age, Carlyle exclaimed, "Here 
is a new mystic." These Letters advocate 
unanimity in the methods of arriving at con- 
clusions in political or social problems. By 
unanimity Mill meant what Arnold afterward 
desired for literature as set forth in his essay on 
A French Eton. Every progressive science de- 
[1251 



John Stuart Mill 

pends on such an agreement among its experts; 
therefore, why should not these social difficul- 
ties, the solution of which means so much to 
the nation's well-being, be similarly deter- 
mined? This is what Mill meant by "social 
science." To him it was capable of an exacti- 
tude equal to that of natural science; it in- 
cluded correct diagnoses and proper remedies, 
which were calculated to advance civilization, 
and rid it of its many evils. The ignorance 
and uncertainty concerning even the very rudi- 
ments of social problems showed the crying 
need of an ordered investigation. But Mill's 
efforts failed, as did his attempt to form a 
Radical party in Parliament. The failure, 
however, was only temporary; for his work 
gave to reform the inestimable benefit of a good 
advertisement, and modern social ethics owe to 
him more than has yet been determined. The 
steady expansion of the emotional side of his 
nature, for which Mrs. Taylor's companionship 
was responsible, was manifest in his increasing 
sympathy with the plain people. "The human 
element" he claims was due to her, and as he 
contemplated the condemnation of thousands of 
laborers to a wretched and cramped existence, 
and thousands more to semi-starvation, the 
hideous spectacle haunted him day and night. 
Hatred of oppression of any sort was a fire in 
his bones. His suppressed wrath can be felt as 
he recounts the tyrannical brutalities of man 
[126] 



John Stuart M ill 

to woman and the recklessness shown by men 
and women to helpless animals. 

These evils could only be suppressed by a 
thorough reformation of economic conditions 
and a wise and judicial administration of an 
exalted democracy. In order to acquaint him- 
self with the entire situation he made a minute 
study of the literature of sociology; and though 
he was no sectarian, he was not finally opposed 
to socialism. Rather than permit the present 
condition to continue he would have preferred 
socialism as the lesser evil. He says, " The social 
problem of the future [will be] how to unite the 
greatest individual liberty of action with a com- 
mon ownership in the raw material of the globe, 
and an equal participation of all in the benefits 
of combined labor." ^ But he recognized that 
socialism would utterly fail unless supplied with 
a high type of character, and that so long as 
men continued to allow their political beliefs 
to be actuated by their individual interests 
rather than by the general welfare they were 
not fitted for socialism in practise. He always 
looked to education as the chief means of rais- 
ing them to this disinterested level, but his 
opinions fluctuated as to the speedy realization 
of this end. At the close of his life he was less 
sanguine in his estimate of the interval that 
must elapse before democracy could wisely 
adapt itself to such a far-reaching adjustment. 

1 Autobiography, p. 232. 

[127] 



John Stuart Mill 

This loss of confidence was caused by the un- 
worthy attitude of a large portion of the British 
public toward the Civil War in America.^ Mill 
was no demagogue. He could and did unflinch- 
ingly resist the tumultuous tyranny which usurps 
the true function of democracy. He pleaded 
for the latter as a form of government, because 
in his opinion politics were highly educative to 
the mass of the people. He, however, was 
aware of its dangers, and insisted on minorities 
being represented in legislative bodies. The 
Radicalism he promoted was a protest against 
the privileges of oligarchical rule on the one 
hand and the tumult of mob law on the other; 
and he flung his trained energies into the pro- 
test, to such advantage, that to-day we see in 
England a triumphant democracy trying its 
prentice-hand at the creation of opportuni- 
ties for the many instead of the few. This 
movement for the reclamation of popular 
rights owes not a little to the keen advocacy of 
Mill. 

He sat in the House of Commons from 1865 
to 1868, and his sensitiveness to duty made him 
rivet himself to his place during every hour of 
the session. While his presence there was 
deemed an honor, he never felt at home in that 
unique and powerful assembly. By nature and 
training he was not a Parliamentarian, and 
Disraeli is reported to have called him "a 

^Autobiography, p. 269. 

[128] 



John Stuart Mill 

political-finishing governess," a phrase which 
may have referred to the didactic tone of Mill's 
speeches. On the other hand, it was Gladstone 
who gave him the widely quoted title, "the 
Saint of Rationalism," adding, "He did us all 
good." Bright voted against him on one occa- 
sion; and when reproached for doing so, he 
gruffly replied that "the worst of great thinkers 
is that they generally think wrong." This sally 
was not serious, for Mill and Bright were asso- 
ciated on many important and far-reaching 
issues. Mill undoubtedly knew more of the 
empire of India than any other member of the 
House of his day, and he narrowly missed a seat 
on the first Imperial Council. He retired from 
Parliament with a sense of relief, because he 
felt that his true mission was to affect the course 
of events, not by an official career — his gifts 
were unsuited to the rough-and-tumble of de- 
bate — but by directing the trend of general 
thought and current opinion. For this he 
had peculiar qualifications; and to have puri- 
fied the social and political controversies of 
the time from passion and prejudice, develop- 
ing moderation and balance is a service that 
cannot be too highly praised. The man who 
brings about a new and beneficial result de- 
serves a high place among his fellows, and 
scarcely lower would we account the man who, 
like Mill, regenerates our methods of thinking. 
Thus, although as a member of Parliament he 
[1291 



John Stuart M ill 

achieved small distinction, his whole conduct in 
public was, according to Mr. Frederic Harrison, 
"that of a courageous, conscientious, and noble- 
minded citizen, who gave his countrymen a 
rare example of how to play the most perilous 
of all parts — 'the role of a philosopher as 
ruler.'" Whether we agree or not with these 
claims, his bearing was always a combination 
of fidelity, justice, and courage. 

Though brought up in absolute indifference 
to religion. Mill had a very religious nature; it 
was not until after his death, however, that 
the world became acquainted with the views he 
actually held. His father had been early led to 
reject, not only the belief in any revelation, but 
also the foundations of natural religion. But- 
ler's Analogy restrained him for a while, but 
eventually he considered the Bishop's argu- 
ments as conclusive for nobody except the 
opponent for whom it was intended. Finding 
no halting-place in Deism, he finally took ref- 
uge in what was known later as Agnosticism. 
The activity of evil in the world promoted his 
negative attitude. The younger Mill never 
threw off religious belief, because he never had 
it. He looked upon all faiths, ancient and 
modern, as matters which did not concern him.* 
But the parental advice that he should not speak 
freely of this state of mind caused him to turn 
within himself; and when his Three Essays on 

^ See Autobiography, p. 43. 
[130] 



John Stuart Mill 

Religion appeared, they made quite a commo- 
tion among his followers. Leslie Stephen put 
the book down and paced his study in angry 
surprise. Mrs. Stephen offered the consoling 
remark, "I always told you John Mill was or- 
thodox." A controversy arose as to the real 
nature of Mill's religious opinions. The first 
essay deals with the various interpretations 
that can be given to the term "Nature," and the 
aim is to show that Nature is not a true and 
complete guide in religion and morals. The 
following passages are good examples of the 
tone of the essay: 

"Nature impales men, breaks them as if on 
the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild 
beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with 
stones like the first Christain martyr, starves 
them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons 
them by the quick or slow venom of her exhala- 
tions, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths 
in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a 
Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. All this 
Nature does with the most supercilious disregard, 
both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts 
upon the best and the noblest indifferently with 
the meanest and worst.^ 

" [She is] replete with everything which when 
committed by human beings is most worthy of 
abhorrence; any one who endeavored in his 
actions to imitate the natural course of things 

^ Three Essays on Religion (third edition), p. 29. 
[1311 



John Stuart M ill 

would be universally seen and acknowledged to 
be the wickedest of men."^ 

This dread catalogue of deeds, which over- 
match anarchy and the reign of terror, drew 
from Mill the dexterous piece of logic frequently 
quoted: "Either God could have prevented evil, 
and would not; or He would have prevented evil, 
and could not. If I accept the first, I conclude 
He is not all-good. If I accept the second, then 
He is not all-powerful." The possibilities of 
God, however, cannot be compressed into a 
dilemma. Mill's reasoning about the goodness 
and power of God and his insistence on choos- 
ing an alternative are fallacious. It is easy to 
formulate a proposition that appears conclu- 
sive; but a syllogism may be formally correct, 
and still be actually wrong. Why cannot God be 
all-powerful, and yet allow evil a place in the 
divine scheme .^^ That is a supposition which 
Mill did not even admit here, though he allowed 
it in a letter written to a friend in 1860, to 
whom he says, "It would be a great moral 
improvement to most persons, be they Chris- 
tian, Deists, or atheists, if they firmly believed 
the world to be under the government of a 
Being who, willing only good, leaves evil in the 
world solely in order to stimulate human facul- 
ties by an unremitting struggle against every 
form of it." 

As we have seen, he repudiates conformity to 

^ Three Essays on Religion (third edition), p. 65. 
[1321 



John Stuart Mill 

nature; it is senseless and diabolical; and, in 
point of fact, he asserts that all the good accom- 
plished in the world is the result of man's con- 
stant effort to control nature's blind and brutal 
havoc. Darwin's views of nature were not at 
this time fully before the world; Huxley had 
not yet developed his theories as outlined in the 
Romanes Lecture: so that to Mill we must give 
the credit of propounding opinions which were 
the result of individual experiences and obser- 
vations; and although, to use Morley's terms, 
they were merely a surface and horizontal view, 
it is fair to assume they had a deep effect on the 
thought of the period. Tennyson was nearer 
the truth in his famous stanza on the man: 

"Who trusted God was love indeed. 
And love creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravin, shrieked against his creed." 

Even this is submission rather than satisfaction, 
but Mill could not submit. "It was the con- 
flict of nature's way with man's sense of justice 
that compelled him to judge her so terribly; 
it was not its contradiction to a heart of infinite 
pity in the God who had made man." ^ 

The second essay dealt with the Utility of 
Religion. The questions asked are: Is religion 
directly serviceable to the social good.'' Is it 
useful for ennobling individual human nature-f* 

^ Fairbairn's The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 96. 
[133] 



John Stuart Mill 

He answers both questions in the affirmative, 
though he maintains rehgion can have these two 
forms of utihty without being necessarily super- 
natural; and he concludes the essay with an 
avowed preference for the religion of humanity, 
or, to use his own phrase, the religion of social 
duty. The third essay is on Theism. It is 
this part of the book which kindled the fears 
of his friends. Morley felt that the Mill he 
knew was slipping through his hands, and 
Courtney declared that the twilight land of 
Mill's semi-faith was not exactly known to his 
followers. The first leading idea is that God is 
the cause of the world, and though not always 
omnipotent, yet always benevolent. This com- 
pares very oddly with a nature full of cruelties. 
The second important idea is immortality, in 
which he has a faint belief. He urges that the 
soul may be immortal because the body is not 
the cause, but only the concomitant of mental 
life. The third idea centers upon Christ as a 
divinely appointed teacher. "Select," he says, 
"all the sayings of Christ which have high 
value, and reject the rest, and you are left with 
a character inexplicable on natural and his- 
torical grounds." We turn to his Logic, and 
find that the science of social development can- 
not dispense with the law of continuity. Histor- 
ical sociology cannot admit that in the world's 
delevopment a character could arise which had 
no relation to the past and no roots in existing 
[134] 



John Stuart Mill 

social conditions. Yet, despite the Logic, the 
essay on Theism declares that Christ was 
charged with "a special, express, and unique 
commission from God to lead mankind to 
truth and virtue."^ Indeed, the whole para- 
graph is so refreshing we venture to quote it: 

"Whatever else may be taken away from us 
by rational criticism, Christ is still left: a 
unique figure, not more unlike all his precur- 
sors than all his followers, even those who had 
the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It 
is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in 
the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know 
not how much of what is admirable has been 
superadded by the tradition of his followers. 
The tradition of followers suflSces to insert any 
number of marvels, . . . but who among his 
disciples, or among their proselytes, was ca- 
pable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, 
or of imagining the life and character revealed 
in the Gospels ? But about the life and sayings 
of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, 
combined with profundity of insight, which . . . 
must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the 
estimation of those who have no belief in his 
inspiration, in the very first rank of all the men 
of sublime genius of whom our species can 
boast. When this preeminent genius is com- 
bined with the qualities of probably the greatest 
moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, 

^ Essays on Religion, p. 255. 
[135] 



John Stuart Mill 

who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be 
said to have made a bad choice in pitching on 
this man as the ideal representative and guide 
of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy 
even for an unbeliever to find a better transla- 
tion of the rule of virtue from the abstract into 
the concrete than to endeavor so to live that 
Christ would approve our life. When to this 
we add that, to the conception of the rational 
skeptic, it remains a possibility that Christ 
actually was what he supposed himselfj to be 

— not God, for he never made the smallest pre- 
tension to that character, and would probably 
have thought such a pretension as blasphemous, 
as it seemed to the men who condemned him 

— but a man charged with a special, express, 
and unique commission from God to lead man- 
kind to truth and virtue; we may well conclude 
that the influences of religion on the character, 
which will remain after rational criticism has 
done its utmost against the evidences of relig- 
ion, are well worth preserving, and that what 
they lack in direct strength, as compared with 
those of a firmer belief, is more than compen- 
sated by the greater truth and rectitude of the 
morality they sanction." ^ 

In a letter to Carlyle he says: "I have recently 
read the New Testament. ... It has made 
no new impression, only strengthened the best 
of the old. I have for years had the very same 

1 Essays on Religion, pp. 253 fif. 
[1361 



John Stuart Mill 

idea of Christ, and the same unbounded rever- 
ence for him as now; it was because of this 
reverence that I sought a more perfect acquaint- 
ance with the records of his Hfe, that indeed 
gave new hfe to the reverence, which in any 
case was becoming or was closely allied with 
all that was becoming a hving principle in my 
character." ^ Confessions and sentiments of 
this kind well up from the deeps of his nature; 
and had not his youthful soul been overlaid 
with his father's crass materialism, we might 
reasonably believe he would have been, not 
only the saint of rationalism, but a saint of 
social Christianity. To have begun life thor- 
oughly diverted from Christian truth, and to 
rise steadily to such a noble appreciation of 
Christ, stands greatly to the credit of Mill. 

During the latter part of his life he was the 
man to whom many leaders looked for guidance, 
and his opinions, if not fully accepted, were 
always worthy of serious consideration. But 
more than that, he was a hving example of 
disinterestedness, and zeal for mankind. His 
favorite motto was, "The night cometh when 
no man can work." Every movement for the 
improvement of the conditions of the people 
had his whole-hearted approval, and he endeav- 
ored to aid all who identified themselves with 
beneficent schemes. Bain records that he was 
a strong supporter of Chadwick's Poor Law and 

^ Letters of John Stuart Mill, p. 93. 
[ 137 ] 



John Stuart Mill 

Sanitary Legislation. One of the most striking 
examples of his fearlessness was his firm opposi- 
tion to public opinion on the vexed questions of 
Irish land legislation. When the penny postage 
was initiated, he was overjoyed. In other direc- 
tions, too, his services were many and valuable; 
for instance, it was he who discovered Tennyson 
to his generation, and he also revealed the in- 
trinsic worth of Carlyle's French Revolution^ 
securing for it a speedy recognition. 

Lastly, Mill, as an apostle of reason, is a 
voice not without its warnings. For once rea- 
son is jettisoned; our later-day democracy has 
no principle of guidance, and flounders, as it is 
doing at this hour, among judgments that are 
confused, dogmatic, and narrowly emotional. If 
only the name of a temporary leader is shouted 
in a public meeting, it is at once the signal 
for a round of clumsy abuse or meaningless 
applause. The real motive forces are too fre- 
quently wayward impulses; and quite indepen- 
dently of the question as to whether reality 
is behind them or not, they take the place of 
orderly inquiry and legitimate progress. Un- 
less we can return to Mill's methods, and 
believe that facts cannot go ahead of ideas, 
reformers will hinder rather than help the 
causes they seek to serve. 

"No calculus, it has been well said, can 
integrate the innumerable little pulses of knowl- 
edge and of thought that he has made to vibrate 
[138] 



John Stuart Mill 

in the minds of his generation. In logic, in 
ethics, in politics, we have nourished ourselves 
at his springs. Let us make the full acknowl- 
edgment of our debt, and also add that, while 
all that is worst in him belongs to the eight- 
eenth century, all that is best is akin to the 
highest, best spirit of the nineteenth."^ His 
influence on his generation was enormous and 
if advocates of democracy, political economists, 
sociologists, and moralists of today, see farther 
than their fathers, it is because they stand on 
the shoulders of John Stuart Mill. 

» W. L. Courtney's J. S. Mill, p. 174. 



[139] 



FOURTH LECTURE 
JAMES MARTINEAU 



" We have become free from the fetters of spiritual 
narrowness; we have, because of our progressive cul- 
ture, become capable of returning to the Source and 
apprehending Christianity in its purity. We have 
regained the courage to stand with firm feet on God's 
own earth and to feel within, our own human nature, 
God-endowed. Let spiritual culture continue ever to 
advance, let the natural sciences grow ever broader and 
deeper, and the human spirit enlarge itself as it will — 
yet, beyond the majesty and moral culture which shines 
and lightens in the Gospels, it will not advance." 

Goethe. 



JAMES MARTINEAU 
PAUT I 



THE Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 
1685 marked the culmination of the 
fanatical policy of Louis XIV, and inflicted a 
loss upon France from which she never re- 
covered. The nation's history was saddened; 
its strength was depleted; and a quarter of a 
million of its choicest subjects were driven into 
adjacent provinces and beyond the high seas. 
Among the Huguenots who escaped, during the 
harryings and dragonnades, were Gaston Mar- 
tineau and William Pierre, who met as fellow 
refugees on the ship that carried them to Eng- 
land. The tyrannical and brutal assaults upon 
their most cherished convictions had already 
bound together this afflicted people, and the 
friendship then begun ripened into a family 
union. In 1693 Pierre's daughter was married 
to Gaston Martineau at the French church in 
Spitalfields, London. 

Two years later the newly wedded couple 

left the metropolis, and made their home in 

the ancient city of Norwich, the capital of East 

Anglia, and a well-known center of Puritanism. 

[143] 



James M artin e au 

Here they entered into more or less intimate 
relationship with such leaders as Henry Finch, 
John Meadows, and Benjamin Fairfax, — men 
who had felt the repressive measures of Arch- 
bishop Laud and the Stuarts, and who extended 
a cordial and sympathetic welcome to their 
Huguenot brethren. The sad yet heroical 
story df the perils of their ancestors was un- 
ceasingly fascinating to the later Martineaus, 
and it kindled in them a hatred of any sort of 
legalized injustice, and a fervent passion for 
religious liberty. For several generations they 
seem to have followed the vocation of Gaston 
Martineau as practising surgeons and physi- 
cians. But Thomas, the father of Dr. Mar- 
tineau, was a wool merchant, who, after an 
honorable and self-sacrificing career, died in 
1826, leaving to his children a stainless record 
of moral intrepidity and integrity. His wife, 
whose maiden name was Elizabeth Rankin, 
hailed from northern England. She was a 
woman of devout and practical temper and a 
calmly fervent zeal, whose domestic duties 
absorbed her time and toil and care. She 
guarded the temporal and, more especially, the 
spiritual interests of her household with un- 
swerving devotion. Her innate refinement and 
sweetness were never surrendered to the de- 
mands of her hard and patient tasks. She had 
an inborn taste for music, literature, and the 
arts, which her children imbibed from her. In 
[144] 



James M artin e au 

this home of even, strong desires, quiet purity, 
and simple steadfastness, James Martineau 
was born on the 21st of April, 1805. The 
building, a plain three-storied brick structure, 
stands to-day on Magdalene Street, and is 
known as the "Martineau House." Under its 
archway the visitor passes to the garden, which 
retains some traces of its former beauty. In 
the apartment immediately above the archway 
Harriet Martineau, the famous sister of the 
eight children, wrote her earlier works. The 
city spreads from north to south, encompass- 
ing its venerable fabrics, its thirty-six churches, 
and a mighty mound raised over the bones of 
the heathen king who is buried deep beneath, 
his sword by his side, and his treasures about 
him. The gray castle rises three hundred feet 
above the level of the flatlands, and among the 
immemorial trees stands the Norman master's 
work, the great cathedral, with its stately and 
cloud-encircled spire, which George Borrow 
never ceased to praise. 

The meeting-house where the Martineaus 
worshipped was known as the Octagon Chapel. 
John Wesley described it in his Journal as 
"perhaps the most elegant in all Europe, the 
inside is furnished in the highest taste and is 
as clean as any nobleman's salon. How can it 
be thought that the coarse old gospel should 
find admission there.?" It harbored a different 
presentation of the evangel from that which 
[145] 



James M artin e au 

Wesley's gallant and hardy field-preachers 
would have made, yet one which gave to the 
earnest lad who heard it a consciousness of the 
Everlasting God as his divine Father and a 
profound reverence for sacred realities. The 
sermons of Thomas Madge, the first pastor he 
recalled, kindled in him an ambition to become 
a messenger of truth and peace to men. 

In the well-ordered and frugal household of 
the Martineaus the older children taught the 
younger, and James was always the peculiar 
charge of Harriet, who felt herself responsible 
for what he said and did. His eldest brother, 
Thomas, a rising surgeon of much promise, 
died while comparatively young. When James 
was eight years old, he entered Norwich Gram- 
mar School, where he remained from 1815 to 
1817. Later he was sent to Bristol to the 
academy of the well-known Dr. Lant Car- 
penter, whose wise and timely instructions 
stimulated his growing intellect and moral 
enthusiasm. Upon leaving Bristol he proceeded 
to Derby, with the intention of becoming an 
engineer. Fortunately for Christendom that 
purpose was thwarted; but the visit was an 
important event in his career, for in the home 
of the Rev. Edward Higginson he met his 
future wife, and while here he definitely 
decided on the course his life should take. 
The death of Henry Turner of Nottingham, a 
junior minister of spiritual renown, so moved 
[ 146 ] 



James Martineau 

him that "it worked his conversion and sent 
him into the ministry." 

When he looked around for a theological 
school in which to begin his preparatory train- 
ing, he found none which did not demand creedal 
tests and subscriptions, save the Free College 
then located at York, later at Manchester, and 
finally at London. To York he went, and was 
enrolled there as a student in 1822. The cur- 
riculum was an unusually advantageous one 
for the times, and Martineau availed himself 
to the fullest extent of its opportunities. At 
the conclusion of his course he faced the 
future, enriched in mind by his arduous studies, 
and mellowed in character by the sorrows he 
had experienced in the loss of his father and 
brother. A single quotation from the grave 
and prescient youth of twenty-two shows how 
mature he was. "Nothing," said he, "is with- 
out God. The fields of earth, the boundless 
recesses of heaven, are the scenes of His cease- 
less activity. He is felt in every breeze that 
blows; He is seen in every form of beauty and 
sublimity." Such was the creed he had formu- 
lated, derived in part from this creedless insti- 
tution, and it proved to be a sufficient foundation 
upon which the graduate could erect one of the 
noblest religious philosophies of any age. 

On leaving college he took the place of his 
former master. Dr. Carpenter, and a little later 
was called from Bristol to the assistant pas- 
[147] 



James M artin e au 

torate of Eustace Street Congregation, Dublin. 
Here comparative freedom from parochial de- 
tails enabled him to perfect his pulpit style 
right early. His views on sermonic develop- 
ment were always high and serious, and he 
approached his people only after the most 
thorough and exhaustive preparation of the 
themes he selected for their meditation. The 
results of this unhampered study were seen in his 
creation of a new order of homiletical literature, 
of which Hours of Thought and Endeavors after 
the Christian Life are the best examples, and des- 
tined, in the opinion of not a few competent 
critics, to outlive the rest of his works. His 
ordination followed his call, and it is worthy of 
remark that the future prophet of liberal Chris- 
tianity received it from the Presbyterian Church 
of Ireland, which then participated in the " her- 
esies ' ' of the day. After the office of the ministry 
had been fully assumed, he returned to England 
to marry Miss Higginson, who proved to be in 
all respects "a complete helpmeet worthy of 
the great love he bore her." They made their 
first home in Dublin, and there began a 
happy period of mutual sympathy and con- 
genial work. In addition to his clerical duties, 
which were not excessive, he taught Hebrew 
and the higher mathematics to undergraduates 
of the University. 

When it fell to his lot to undertake the senior 
pastorate of tjie Eustace Street Church, he 
[1481 



James M ar tine au 

found connected with its financial resources a 
Government grant of money, which dated 
from the time of the Stuarts. This he at once 
refused to accept, and wrote a powerful defense 
of his action containing four reasons against 
State pay or patronage. The dispute was 
severe, and he resigned his charge rather than 
lower his standard. At the moment he had 
no prospect of another appointment; but the 
sterling manliness and consistency of his atti- 
tude drew many hearts toward the courageous 
young preacher, and he soon received and 
accepted an invitation to the Paradise Street 
Chapel, Liverpool, where he spent twenty-four 
years from 1832 to 1857 — years filled with 
growing usefulness and gradually extending 
fame. His colleagues in the Unitarian churches 
of the town were John Hamilton Thom and 
Henry Giles, men of learning and eloquence, 
who joined him in repelling a bitter attack upon 
their interpretation of Christianity, which had 
been engendered by a group of Anglican clergy- 
men. The debate excited national interest, 
and was known as "The Liverpool Contro- 
versy." Its chief outcome was the revelation 
of Martineau's hitherto unsuspected powers 
and resources. Orthodox and heretical alike 
were forced to recognize in him the foremost 
divine of the Unitarian fellowship. Apart from 
this gratifying result, the quarrel was as acri- 
monious as it was useless. But it secured him 
[149] 



James M artine a 



u 



friends and supporters, who gladly provided 
the necessary funds for further cultivation of 
his remarkable gifts. In 1848 they sent him to 
Berlin University, where he spent one winter, 
during which he made a careful survey of Ger- 
man thought and literature. Greek philosophy 
was also studied from a fresh standpoint, and 
the general effect of this contact was such that 
he always referred to it as the time of "a new 
intellectual birth." He wrote to Francis W. 
Newman, the Cardinal's brother, "I shall ever 
be thankful for this year of absence; it has at 
last assured me that I am not too old to learn." 
The Liverpool ministry and the earlier years in 
London reveal marked traces of his visit to 
Germany. It consolidated Martineau's posi- 
tion among both admirers and opponents of his 
theological tendencies. Moncure D. Conway 
states that the English clergy awoke to the 
fact that here was a Unitarian minister who 
left them far behind "in philosophical culture, 
in classical lore, in biblical criticism," and in 
an ordered and weighty style of speech, which 
was a fitting instrumentality for these superior 
attainments. Crowning all other endowments, 
even the prejudiced discovered in Martineau a 
spiritual clarity and insight and an attractive 
symmetry of character, which were the more 
effective because of the utter absence of arro- 
gance or the taint of cant. 

In 1853 he was appointed a lecturer in his 
[150] 



James M artine au 

Alma Mater, and five years later, when the 
college was removed to London, he decided to 
resign his charge at Liverpool, in order that he 
might continue his professorship in the re- 
founded institution. He united this office with 
the pastorate of the Little Portland Street 
Chapel. "Gain does not tempt me," he said 
to his sorrowing flock when he bade them fare- 
well, "for I go to a poorer life; or Ambition, 
for I retire to a less conspicuous ; or Ease, for 
I commit myself to unsparing labor." ^ His 
advent in the metropolis fulfilled the aims he 
had steadily kept before him since his vacation 
in Germany. He became the foremost preacher 
of his order, a living voice uttering, for those 
whom he strove to aid, the truths by which men 
and nations live. During his residence abroad 
a renewed conviction of man's moral obliga- 
tions, and a fresh insight into the fundamental 
verities underlying visible things, had quickened 
his perceptions and given him a vision of the 
future he had not previously enjoyed. This con- 
tact with the deeper and more vital thought of 
the Continentals enabled him to pierce through 
mere verbiage, and the result was that his 
utterances glowed with the spirit of an illu- 
minating philosophy. He was entirely freed 
from the Utilitarian and Necessitarian views 
then prevalent in Britain ; he parted company 
forever with the Benthamites, and their latest 

^ Life and Letters of James Martineau, Vol. I, p. 326. 
[151] 



James M artin e au 

advocate, John Stuart Mill. He identified 
himself with a refined and spiritually susceptible 
metaphysic, of which he became a thoroughly 
competent exponent. His friendships with John 
James Taylor and Francis W. Newman were 
important factors at this time. The former, his 
predecessor whom he succeeded as principal of 
the college in 1869, was a generous and urbane 
scholar whose culture and geniality charmed 
professors and students alike; the latter was 
a misunderstood man, whose story is pathetic. 
Newman had lost the love of many of his asso- 
ciates; he was hampered by marked peculiari- 
ties, but ever eager in his search for truth, and 
he suffered acutely for the sake of his opinions. 
The foolish and wayward people whose frivol- 
ity and pleasure-seeking betray their sordidness, 
and the degraded whose lives are openly vile, 
were never the direct objects of Martineau's 
mission as he conceived it. He desired above 
all else to enlighten and cheer those who take 
life at the best; those who, though prone to 
God and goodness, beauty and truth, are robbed 
of their faith and hope by doubt and uncer- 
tainty. For such perplexed and encumbered 
souls he had an unfailing affinity, and his apti- 
tude for elucidation found free play in his 
service to them. There was a certain fascina- 
tion about the stately aloofness of Martineau's 
spirit which drew the few, though it did not 
attract the multitude. This, together with a 
[152] 



James M artine au 

characteristic wistful tenderness, justified Lady 
Tennyson's description of him as having "a 
subtle and wonderful mind; he is mournful 
and tender-looking, 'a noble gentleman.'"^ In 
this congregation were to be found such celeb- 
rities as Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Dickens, 
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and other scien- 
tific and literary magnates. Mr. A. W. Jackson 
described his presence in the London pulpit as 
"a tall, spare figure robed in the scholar's 
gown, and wearing the dignities of his office 
as a natural grace; a thin face, suggestive 
of the cloister, and traced with deep lines of 
thought; a voice not loud, but musical and 
reaching; an enunciation leisurely but not 
slow, and perfectly distinct. . . . And now the 
sermon; from the beginning it is plain that it 
is to serious thought, yes, and hard thinking, 
that you are invited. . . . Dr. Martineau as a 
preacher never entertains; he has serious busi- 
ness with you, and to the consideration of that 
he holds you with little thought whether he 
entertain or not. You have been living in some 
castle of worldliness or pride; — there is a hope- 
less debris around you, and you a shivering and 
unsheltered soul in the bleak desert of the 
world. You are suffocated with the dust of 
life; you are borne away to some Alpine sum- 
mit where the air is free and a glory thrills 
you. You came hither, as you felt, deserted 

1 Life and Letters of James Martineau, Vol. II, p. 2. 
[153] 



James M artin e au 

and alone; you go home with — God." ^ 
"Sometimes," adds Miss Cobbe, "these ascents 
were steep and difficult." No doubt they were, 
even for climbers of her caliber; but the 
preacher was no ordinary guide to these bolder 
spiritual eminences. The upward movements 
he directed were strong and sure; they justified 
the remark of Mr. Gladstone that "Dr. Mar- 
tineau was the greatest living thinker of his 
calling." He laid emphasis, not only on the 
virgin scholarship and profound thought which 
characterized his spoken words, but also on all 
the requirements of a city parish, and especially 
on the Christian nurture of childhood and youth. 
As might be expected, he spent laborious days 
in his study; but he was no mere recluse, 
unversed in worldly wisdom, for his knowledge 
of practical affairs was both extensive and 
accurate. Nothing escaped him. He held 
that "a soul occupied with great ideas best per- 
forms small duties." And the reward of his 
efforts was not in the confidence of the cultured 
earned alone, but in the respect and even ven- 
eration of the young people of his charge and 
of the students of the college. 

Harvard first, then Leyden, Edinburgh, 
Oxford, and Dublin gave him their highest 
degrees. The Spectator pointed out that while 
learned Europe heaped its honors upon him, 
Oxford did not seem to discover him till he 

^ James Martineau: A Study and Biography, pp. 143-144. 
[1541 



James M artin e au 

was over eighty, and Cambridge appears never 
to have heard of him. The recognition ac- 
corded, whether early or late, was based on 
a growing list of philosophical and theological 
treatises which could not be ignored, although 
in some points they were diametrically opposed 
to orthodox dogmas. Ambassador Bryce, who 
presented him at Oxford in 1885, for the recep- 
tion of the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, testi- 
fied to his long life, "full of dignity, sweetness, 
and distinguished literary activity." ^ The 
encomium was worthy of both men, and it 
selected from the embarrassing wealth of Mar- 
tineau's life and services those features which 
will remain as the permanent possessions of 
Englishmen and Americans in days to come. 
Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Huxley, Tyndall, 
Cardinal Manning, Father Dalgairns, Henry 
Sidgwick, and Dr. Ward and others formed 
with Martineau "The Metaphysical Society." 
They met to discuss subjects of the highest 
import, and when the society was dissolved the 
minute-book was presented to Dr. Martineau 
as a token of gratitude for his services to the 
fraternity. Located in different camps on 
many questions, these men, to quote Huxley, 
"came to love each other like brothers. We 
all expended so much charity that had it been 
money we should have been bankrupt." 

In 1862 Martineau issued a critique on 

^ Life and Letters of James Martineau, Vol. II, pp. 146-7. 
[155] 



James M artine au 

Spencer's First Principles, in 1863 another on 
Renan's Life of Jesus, and in 1874 appeared a 
new edition of Hymns of Praise and Prayer. 
His indebtedness to the poetry and devotional 
literature of the Church was dwelt upon in a 
letter he addressed to the Rev. S. D. I. Mac- 
Donald in 1859, and also in the preface to the 
book. "I am constrained to say that neither 
my intellectual preference nor my moral admira- 
tion goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, 
sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, 
Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to con- 
trast unfavorably with their opponents, and 
to exhibit a type of thought and character far 
less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of 
Christianity. ... In devotional literature and 
religious thought I find nothing of ours that 
does not pale before Augustine, Tauler, and 
Pascal. And in the poetry of the Church it is 
the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines 
of Charles Wesley or of Keble, that fasten on 
my memory and heart, and make all else seem 
poor and cold. . . . To be torn away from the 
great company I have named, and transferred 
to the ranks which command a far fainter 
allegiance, is an unnatural and for me an in- 
admissible fate. . , . For myself both con- 
viction and feeling keep me close to the poetry 
and piety of Christendom. It is my native 
air, and in no other can I breathe; and wherever 
it passes, it so mellows the soil and feeds the 
[156] 



James M artin e au 

roots of character, and nurtures such grace and 
balance of affection, that for any chmate simi- 
larly rich in elements of perfect life I look in 
vain elsewhere." In 1876 the first series of 
Hours of Thought was published, followed by 
the second series in 1879; in 1882 came the 
volume on Spinoza. For some time the ma- 
terial ultimately embodied in Types of Ethical 
Theory had been taking shape in his mind, and 
the publication of this splendid contribution to 
ethics was contemporary with his retirement 
from his more public life. But his activities as 
a writer were never more manifest than after 
this occurrence. The Study of Religion ap- 
peared in 1888, and The Seat of Authority in 
Religion was given to the world in 1890, when 
the author was eighty-five years old. Even 
this advanced age did not retard his marvelously 
preserved powers. Four volumes of Essays, 
Reviews, and Addresses were subsequently sent 
forth, and later still a collection of Home 
Prayers, which he described as the last book he 
would offer to the reading public. 

He resigned his principalship of the College 
in 1885, and the fifteen years left to him were 
as notable for his physical alertness and activ- 
ity as for the literary output we have indi- 
cated. He had always been a vigorous 
walker; and when the Rev. O. B. Frothingham 
called upon him, Martineau, who was then 
seventy -five, proposed a nine-mile tramp across 
[157] 



James M ar tin e au 

country, with a mountain climb thrown in. 
When he was eighty-eight, his hthe form was 
frequently seen as he threaded his way among 
the vehicles of the crowded London streets, and 
not until he was ninety could he be persuaded 
to refrain from jumping off omnibuses in mo- 
tion. He was naturally austere in his regard 
for life and duty, with more care for conscience 
than for the surface raptures of emotion; but 
the light within and the love and regard around 
him made him serenely bright and cheerful, 
and he said, "I think nothing more delightful 
than the first step into my ninetieth year." 
On his eighty-third birthday he received a con- 
gratulatory address, signed by six hundred and 
forty-nine of the most renowned men then 
living, including, besides some we have already 
named, Robert Browning, Max Muller, Jowett 
of Balliol, Sir John Lubbock,^ W. H. Lecky, 
James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Phillips Brooks, and Ernest Renan. The in- 
scription sums up the story: "We admire 
the simple record of a long life passed in the 
strenuous fulfilment of duty, in preaching, in 
teaching the young of both sexes, in writing 
books of permanent value; a life which has 
never been distracted by controversy, and in 
which personal interests and ambitions have 
never been allowed a place." That presence 
of God, which had been the mainstay of his 

^ Now Lord Avebury. 
[158] 



James M artine au 

honored way, and the theme of all his writings 
and preaching, was entered by him in its com- 
plete fulness on January 11, 1900, at the ripe 
age of ninety-five. 

II 

The description of Dr. Martineau as an in- 
tellectual aristocrat, whose works are not avail- 
able for the ordinary individual, is misleading. 
Even those which require some previous knowl- 
edge of the subject dealt with are so suggestive 
that few can fail to receive lasting benefit from 
their perusal. His sermons are accessible to all; 
no one indeed can read them without having 
the love of whatever is noble confirmed and 
the spiritual sensibilities quickened. Yet their 
beauty, fidelity, and dignity would not have 
been so conspicuous or so impressive without 
his profound and reverent study of ethics and 
philosophy. He never catered to the sluggish 
mind; he believed, and he endeavored to per- 
suade others to believe, that "in the soul of 
religion the apprehension of truth and the 
enthusiasm of devotion inseparably blend." 
The sources of sustenance underlying Mar- 
tineau's exquisite discourses were his clear 
and sustained thinking on the mysteries and 
compensations of life, and his suffusion of its 
rational elements with the glow of a chaste 
imagination and the warmth of a living heart. 
These qualities found their expression in a style 
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James M ar tin e au 

which was at once their servant and their friend ; 
a style which gives inspiration to the spirit 
and leaves music in the memory. My former 
teacher, the Rev, Dr. W. T. Davison, in an 
able discussion of Martineau, speaks of this 
style as entirely his own. "If he was not born 
with it and did not lisp it in his cradle, he 
seems to have spoken and written in it from 
early youth when his mind was formed, to 
have employed it whenever he spoke, to have 
written his most friendly letters in it, and to 
have preserved it unaltered, unwavering in its 
stateliness, undimmed in its brilliance, to the 
very end. If Gibbon marches and Macaulay 
trots, Martineau now exhibits the army in the 
splendors of parade and now in the sweep of a 
cavalry charge. He combines strength and 
grace; his thought is lofty, his touch discrimi- 
nating, his argument close and keen, his defini- 
tion accurate, his words express with delicate 
suppleness all the movements of a subtle and 
rapid and powerful mind."^ Many sentences 
may be quoted which linger with us, but a few 
must suffice. "No grief deserves such pity as 
the hopeless privations of a scornful heart." 
"God has so arranged the chronometry of our 
spirits that there shall be thousands of silent 
moments between the striking hours." "Man, 
the self-conscious animal, is the saddest spec- 
tacle in creation; man, the self-conscious Chris- 

^ See London Quarterly Review, April, 1903. 
[160] 



James M artine au 

tian, one of the noblest." "Reflecting vitality 
is hypochondria and disease; reflecting spiritu- 
ality is clearness and strength." "To give to 
God something that we have is heathen; to 
offer Him what we do is Jewish; to surrender 
to Him what we are is Christian." 

Martineau's ethical teaching was based on 
the innate goodness of human nature, whose 
spiritual experiences antedate any formal state- 
ment of religious truth. This position is in 
direct opposition to the dogma of original sin. 
To him a child was God's offspring, and lives 
and moves and has its being in the Divine 
before it arrives at a conscious apprehension 
of its inheritance. It has a native sense of 
right and wrong; it seldom requires to be led; 
we have but to offer the highest and the best 
to the young, and they will act upon it, and be 
filled with a real love for its beauty and praise. 
To demand of them a consciousness of sin and 
ruin was to him a policy both erroneous and 
mischievous. Theories of rewards and punish- 
ments, pleasure and profit were injurious rather 
than helpful to virtuous action and nobility of 
life. The instructor should attach the child's 
inborn sense of righteousness to legitimate and 
clear objects of faith. The unadulterated con- 
science of youth will answer of itself to the 
reality and holiness which are in the Creator 
and His creation. The beliefs of adults — be- 
liefs which result from older and less fortu- 
[161] 



J arfie s M artin e au 

nate experiences — are extraneous to the child's 
mind, and should not be forced upon it. They 
do not touch the religious problems of the im- 
mature, and they inevitably mislead them. The 
suppressive and negative treatment of human 
nature, whether in infants or adults, was 
replaced in Martineau's system by an expan- 
sive and positive treatment, which allowed for 
the free play of inherent virtues. His advo- 
cacy of these tenets had a weighty influence in 
England and America, Their suitability as a 
means of development is now more fully 
recognized, and they have affected the recon- 
structive period of Bible School methods, as 
well as the remodeling of theology and hym- 
nology. Horace Bushnell was another pioneer, 
who, by his teachings on Christian nurture for 
the young, did almost more than Martineau to 
give practical effect to what many regarded as a 
pestilential error. The conception of the youth- 
ful soul as a pure and undefiled arbiter of the 
proper scope and objects of its own faith, able 
with the dawn of consciousness intuitively to 
recognize and obey them, came as a distinct 
shock to the Evangelicals. They deeply dis- 
trusted salvation by education, and preferred 
regeneration as an unmistakable revolution in 
the sinful and fallen spiritual nature. They 
contended that such teaching as Martineau's 
ignored the sinister realities of evil, and could 
not account for the ominous facts of human 
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James M artine au 

life. They refused to admit the superiority of 
the child nature to the doctrines of Holy Scrip- 
ture, or its right to judge them by what Mar- 
tineau defines as the "voice of the living God 
within the child." He affirmed that the greatest 
of all books for the moral and spiritual training 
of youth was the Bible, and that the response 
of the voice within was evoked by the applica- 
tion of the truth the Bible contained. But it 
was not dependent on it; indeed, the Bible was 
nothing more nor less than the externalized 
conscience of the Hebrew race, and, while he 
venerated it, he held it subordinate to that 
moral sense of which it was the expression. 
The seat of authority in religion and ethics was 
native and indestructible, whether in children 
or their elders; it was of direct divine origin, 
and must be carefully distinguished from the 
"ecclesiastical conscience" which had been 
molded by tradition, theology, and the Scrip- 
tures. 

All this is introductory to the intuitional 
theory of ethics upon which Martineau sus- 
tained his system, and from the foregoing com- 
ments it is easy to see what direction that 
system would take. He was emphatic in his 
declaration that man's moral judgment is part 
of his original nature, requiring no extensive 
experience or sudden conversion for its rightful 
exercise. The approval of temperance, truth- 
fulness, and courage, and the condemnation 
[163] 



James Martineau 

of the reverse qualities, are instinctive and 
immediate. The ability to arrive at these 
judgments is an inherent faculty, not to be 
analyzed, universal in extent, and the gift of 
God. In those cases where there is a conflict 
between the higher and lower principles of life, 
conscience acts as the determinative factor. 
The conflict may wage in the soul of the most 
abject heathen, or the most enlightened saint. 
The important thing is not the plane on which 
the struggle is waged, but how it is waged just 
where men are. This inner vision of moral 
discernment is diametrically opposed to the 
Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and its 
statement reveals the wide breach between Mar- 
tineau and his earlier masters. Their ethics 
were always prudential; they carefully noted 
the results of any action, and assigned the ethi- 
cal value of the action accordingly. It was 
right or wrong as it tended to promote pleasure 
or pain. When individual and general happi- 
ness was the experimental outcome, the deed 
was worthy; when otherwise, it was unworthy. 
Martineau carries us into another and a superior 
region. He begins by showing that "the key 
to the ancient philosophy is found in a distinc- 
tion which our language does not enable us 
accurately to express . . . absolute existence 
and relative phenomena." ^ The adjustment of 
the respective rights of these sole claimants of 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 1. 
[164] 



James M artine au 

the whole sphere of things was the problem and 
the task of the Hellenic schools. But under all 
their varieties lay the twofold distribution of 
that which ever is and that which transiently 
appears. These were assumed as exhaustive 
and ultimate. They were also omnipresent, 
and there was no dividing line between the 
eternal entities and the successive phenomena. 
Both were blended in every nature, whether 
human or external. The same divine element 
which constituted the beauty, truth, and good- 
ness of the Cosmos, spread into the human 
mind, and established there the conscious recog- 
nition of beauty, truth, and goodness. Man 
was but a part and member of the universe, 
sharing its mixed character, and standing in no 
antithetical position thereto.^ 

The key to the modern philosophy is found 
in a different distinction, — that between the 
subjective and the objective, between the mind — 
the constituted seat and principle of thought — 
and the scene or data assigned it to think. And 
the answers to the endless questions of the Ego, 
or the Non-Ego, are idealistic or realistic, "in 
proportion as 'they' give ascendency to the 
former, or to the latter, as the source of our 
cognitions." This idealism seeks to interpret 
the world through man, to find mind, idea, 
spirit in all, through all, over all. But Mar- 
tineau never becomes so intellectual in interest, 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 2. 
[165] 



James M ar tin e au 

or so logical in method, that he fails in doing 
full justice to the moral or religious conscious- 
ness. Though he crosses over into the psycho- 
logical theory, he is aware that this of itself 
does not fulfil ethical conditions. Fichte's 
idealism reduced the objective standard of 
moral obligation to a mere modification of self, 
and thus dissipated the essence of imperative 
authority, *' which ever implies a law above and 
beyond the nature summoned to obey it." 
Hegel regarded the philosophical as a higher 
point of view than the religious. The realities 
of faith and reason were translated by the 
thoroughgoing Hegelians into abstractions of 
thought, and this process of reduction exer- 
cised a detrimental rather than a salutary in- 
fluence. To thus disown all reality outside 
the mind, and resolve everything into a sub- 
jective dream, was repulsive to Martineau. 
For in perception and in conscience there is a 
*'5eZ/" and an ^' other than self." "In percep- 
tion it is self and nature, in morals it is self 
and God, which stand face to face in the subjec- 
tive and objective antithesis." No monistic 
system could interpret, from any starting-point, 
any one or all of these without a destructive 
handling of "the facts on which our nature and 
life are built." Without higher objective con- 
ditions nothing is binding on us. "Conscience 
does not frame the law, it simply reveals the 
law, that holds us." Surely that which it dis- 
[166] 



James M artine au 

closes is the regal authority, having, as Bishop 
Butler argued, a further authority which will 
presently support and enforce its demands. 

Leslie Stephen speaks slightingly of Mar- 
tineau's central doctrine of an autonomous 
and independent conscience — a faculty which 
exists as a primitive and elementary instinct 
incapable of further analysis and implanted by 
God. Under the pressure of the evolutionary 
theory, he regards the speculation as erroneous 
and liable to clash with the results of scientific 
inquiry. Martineau asserts that such results 
have their own range of jurisdiction . which 
must not be allowed to interfere with the moral 
order. These boundaries cannot be slurred with- 
out confusion, nor a provincial law enforced 
over an entire spiritual empire. Sensational, 
intellectual, and sesthetical differences may be 
really moral differences, disguised and robbed 
of their standing by the garnish and pretense. 
He names "the scheme of Epicurus and Ben- 
tham, which elicits the moral nature from the 
sentient; that of Cud worth, Clarke, and Price, 
which makes it a dependency on the rational; 
that of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, which 
identifies it with the aesthetic." ^ 

He then proceeds to discuss the moral senti- 
ment in the light of its own experience, and 
shows how this visit to our consciousness of 
right and wrong in its own home has the merit 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 17. 
[1671 



James M artin e au 

of "compelling us to look it full in the face, 
and take distinct notes of the story it tells 
of itself." The fundamental fact of ethics is 
that men have an irresistible tendency to ap- 
prove and disapprove. When our fellow crea- 
tures are in question, we speak of their morals; 
when, however, attention is focused upon our- 
selves, we are led to speak of our duty. In this 
continuous engagement, we judge persons and 
not things. We visit our indignation on the 
man who steals the watch, not on the hand 
that went into the pocket. The external 
world may be lifted into this personal element 
and become the center of various feelings; but 
in itself it is perfectly indifferent to conscience, 
and any application of ethical terms to its 
phenomena is manifestly inappropriate. 

Again, the inner motive of an action is 
distinguished from its outward operation. 
Spencer supports Martineau's plea; ^ and Leslie 
Stephen goes so far to to declare that "the 
clear enunciation of this principle seems to be a 
characteristic of all great moral revelations. 
It may be briefly expressed in the phrase that 
"morality is internal." "Be this," not "Do 
this," is the true form of expression of the moral 
law; and the possibility of expressing any rule in 
this form may be regarded as deciding whether it 
can or cannot have a distinctly moral character.^ 

1 Data of Ethics, Chap. V, Sec. 24, p. 64. 

^ Science of Ethics, Chap. IV, Sec. 16, p. 155. 

[1681 



James M artine au 

It is not by outward appearance that we can 
judge moral action. We must know it on the 
inner side, and only thus do we know it at all. 
In the reduction of a deed to its elements, the 
three stages James Mill indicated are quoted 
by Martineau : there are (1) the sentiments 
from which it springs; (2) the muscular move- 
ments in which it visibly consists; (3) the 
consequences in which it issues. Sever the 
first, and the other two lose their moral quality; 
sever the other two, and the moral quality 
remains. It is obvious that good or evil cannot 
be attached to muscular movement or conse- 
quences, but only to the cause of both in the 
underlying sentiment. The student of Chris- 
tianity does not need to be reminded of the 
great word of Jesus on this theme. Anger, 
malice and lust may lack opportunity, but he 
who would and could not is called to account 
with him who would and did. And in a higher 
than the ethical region the doctrine of divine 
forgiveness for sin is established within us, 
and our reconciliation with God is realized, 
by simple inward penitence, faith, and love. 
Heavenly relations between the All-holy Father 
and the guilty yet contrite spirit are consum- 
mated in the inmost recesses of the heart. The 
scale of external benefits accruing from any 
course of action is not a proper standard of 
estimate for such a course. The love and 
fidelity of the obscure, whose opportunities are 
[169] 



James M artin e au 

small, may be even more intense and devoted, 
and we are to "graduate our approval by the 
purity of the source, not by the magnitude of 
the result." Herein Christian ethics have 
shared the distinctive luster of the system of 
"inwardness" from which they spring. And 
on this issue they carry with them the verdict 
of our moral consciousness. 

Dr. Martineau pushes the examination a step 
farther. He asks whom we first judge, our- 
selves or others? He believes the answer is of 
prime importance, and that it is one of the 
surest tests by which we detect a true theory of 
ethics. The majority of English moralists are 
remiss in this respect, since they concur in say- 
ing that judgment begins with others and the 
habit is then transferred to ourselves.^ W. K. 
Clifford and Leslie Stephen held that "the 
conscience is the utterance of the public spirit 
of the race, ordering us to obey the primary 
conditions of its welfare." Spencer regarded 
the moral consciousness as wholly a social 
product due to the observed or experienced 
consequences of executed action .^ Martineau 
remained true to his theory of the inner spring 
of action, which could not be apprehended by 
any external observation, and which must be 
known only from within. He claimed that 
we judge ourselves first and judge others by 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 27. 

2 Data of Ethics, Chap. VII, Sec. 44, p. 120. 

[170] 



James M artine au 

ourselves. Our actual knowledge of the mo- 
tives of others is necessarily scanty. We con- 
demn brutality in another because we could not 
be guilty of such violence without being faith- 
less to our better self. We quickly gather by 
word, look, or gesture what good or bad pas- 
sions are agitating our fellows. But unless we 
had first experienced these emotions ourselves 
they would be meaningless to us. And in pro- 
portion as the habitual feelings and tastes of 
those around us are foreign to our own, "do 
the manners which express them become un- 
intelligible or displeasing." The man who is 
prone to suspect treachery or fraud in others 
"is little likely to be of a transparent nature 
himself." So criticism, like charity, begins at 
home, and the censorious temper is an artifice 
"by which we suborn a true light to give us a 
false vision." ^ We pay small heed to society 
when two motives are in conflict within us. 
We may have respect for the possible outcome 
of actions directed by the motives; but we 
know without the word of others which is the 
higher motive, and we know it immediately, 
and why it should govern us. He would guard 
this statement against the charge that it makes 
for isolated units. Though our moral esti- 
mates originate in self -reflection, the "social 
sanction" is indispensable to their development 
as a part of our moral nature. The visible 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, pp, 29, 30. 
[ 171 1 



James M artin e au 

world employs, though it does not originate, 
our perceptive powers. In like manner our 
fellow men are instrumental in discovering us 
to ourselves, and the objective conscience em- 
bodied in society and its institutions , has a 
restraining and an educative influence for the 
individual, which Martineau both appreciated 
and enforced. 

In laying bare the process of decisions, he 
arrives at three factors which underlie all moral 
actions: the co-presence of motives, the conflict 
involved, and our freedom to choose between 
them. The maxim of Heraclitus that "strife 
is the father of all things," though mainly 
applied by him to the objective world, has a 
justifiable reference to the circumstances of our 
moral life. If there were no conflict of motives, 
the first to appear would have free course and 
project itself into action instantly. As it is, 
we have the power to determine which motive 
shall govern our conduct, and this freedom 
of choice is a fact concerning which extended 
discussion is futile. How could we approve 
or disapprove of any one's conduct if we did 
not believe that another course of action were 
possible .f*^ There are many arguments against 

^"How could I feel 'morally' toward other individuals 
if I knew they were machines and nothing more? — machines 
which some day I myself might be able to construct like a steam- 
engine? To a convinced theoretical materialist to whom his 
neighbour is a real mechanical system, morality is an absurdity." 
Professor Hans Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the 
Organism, Vol. II, p. 358. 

[172] 



James M artine au 

the freedom of the will; but experience declares 
for it, and the welfare of society demands it. 
The impulses that constantly solicit the acqui- 
escence of the will disclose its prevalence, and 
the keen rivalry of their competition throws 
light on the scale of excellence in conduct. To 
make gratification in any way the criterion of 
this scale of excellence is virtually to hand over 
morals to the hierarchy of prudence rather than 
the hierarchy of right. Men know what they 
like, and they also know what they approve: 
to arrange everything in the former category is 
a hedonistic order; in the latter, a moral one. 
Though what they like they may also approve 
does not afifect this reasoning. The self-con- 
scious apprehension of compared springs of 
action, and men's responsibility to the grada- 
tions of their moral quality, is that knowledge 
of themselves for better or worse which is 
called conscience.^ So whenever men succumb 
to temptation they identify themselves with 
the worst that is possible to them at the mo- 
ment, and true repentance is always accom- 
panied by the confession that there is no excuse 
for the wrong-doing. "Would it have dried 
the tears of Peter's denial to be told that he 
had not murdered but only disowned his 
Lord?" There may be other passions more 
seductive and base, and other deeds more vile; 
but these do not enter into the case. The true 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 53. 
[173] 



James M artine au 

standard of comparison is in men, and above 
men, but never beneath them. Lesser turpi- 
tude does not appear more favorable because 
contrasted with greater. They are judged by 
the principles to which they have been false; 
and that others act on more degenerate levels, 
or from lower motives, furnishes no apology for 
their delinquency. "We are sensible," says 
Martineau, *'of a graduated scale among our 
natural principles, quite distinct from the order 
of their intensity and irrespective of the range 
of their external effects." It is identical and 
constant for all men, no accident of our particu- 
lar personality, but one scale in the moral 
ascent whether we think of the Bushmen of 
Africa or the civilized Occidentals. They are 
on the same ladder which stretches from the 
solid earth into infinitude. Their progress up- 
ward is attended by joys and sorrows, successes 
and failures of its own. Yet it is doubtful if 
any attempt to promote it by a discreet invest- 
ment of energy is attended with good results. 
"If you cannot speak home to the conscience 
at once, condescend to no lower plea: to reach 
the throne-room of the soul, Divine and holy 
things must pass by her grand and royal entry, 
and will refuse to creep up the back stairs of 
greediness and gain. Notwithstanding all that 
philosophers have said about the agreement of 
virtue with rational self-interest, it may be 
doubted whether their reasonings ever recalled 
[174] 



James M artin e au 

by a single step any wandering will; while it is 
notorious that the rugged earnestness of many 
a preacher, assuming a consciousness of sin and 
speaking to nothing else, has awakened multi- 
tudes to a new life, and carried them out of 
their former nature. In short, it would never 
have been prudent to do right, had it not been 
something infinitely more." ^ And as men 
ascend in civilization their outlook becomes 
broader and the moral demands increase. 
Lawlessness and its baneful results take on a 
darker hue in life's exalted stations. When 
men who occupy these violate their trust, the 
very elevation gives impetus to their descent, 
and one may reflect with Milton's Satan: 

" No wonder fallen such a pernicious height." ^ 

That certain acts are permissible at one period 
which are outlawed in a more enlightened age 
need occasion no difficulty, for the imperfect 
knowledge of the earlier stage forbade the dis- 
covery of any higher spring of action. A Greek 
would have been at a loss to classify the forms 
of virtue which are typical of the twentieth 
century. The range of self-control has widened 
immensely, and such virtues as chastity and 
temperance, with a new connotation under the 
Christian regime, are more than any others the 
keystone of the modern social organization. 
Enough has been said to show that Martineau 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 77. 
^ See also St. Luke's Gospel xii, 47, 48. 

[175 1 



James M artin e au 

invariably lays stress on the sentiment from 
which motive and action spring. The lowest 
sources in the scale are censoriousness, vindic- 
tiveness, and suspicion; the highest are rever- 
ence and compassion. It is indicative of the 
excellent spirit that was in him that he should 
have placed reverence first, and nowhere more 
than in our own Republic should this priority 
be pondered. The magnificent rule which 
crowns this summary is also worthy of a place 
in every man's memory: "Every action is 
RIGHT, which, in presence of a lower principle, 
follows a higher: every action is wrong, which, in 
presence of a higher principle, follows a lower." ^ 

The compassion which moved John Howard, 
Florence Nightingale, and Abraham Lincoln to 
rescue the prisoner, the sick, and the enslaved 
has in it eternal righteousness, because for them 
it meant the realization of their highest ideals 
of hfe and the utmost personal sacrifice for 
their accomplishment. Such examples adorn 
the ethical message we are here considering, and 
in itself it is a grateful contrast to the Utili- 
tarianism of the preceding lecture. It shows 
the indescribable value of Martineau as a stimu- 
lating guide in matters of conduct, a counselor 
whose utterances irradiate many perplexing ques- 
tions. When he tells us that ethical judgments 
have to be made quite as often between two 
orders of goodness as between actual good and 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 270. 
[1761 



James M artine au 

evil, and that no person has the right to neglect 
the highest duties confronting him, even though 
this neglect is concealed under the performance 
of lower ones, he supplies the preacher of 
righteousness with a timely homily from the 
Scripture, "These ought ye to have done, and 
not to leave the other undone."^ Human obli- 
gation to be and to do the best we know, 
under all possible circumstances, is absolute 
and endless. God expects nothing more from 
a man than his duty, but that includes all 
he can ever do. The false merit attached to 
works of supererogation is annihilated by the 
ethical infinitude of human nature and the 
divine perfection that governs it. Our best 
is demanded on all occasions; and when we 
have attempted the utmost, we are still un- 
profitable servants, in view of the undischarged 
obligations of an endless development. ^ Heroes 
and heroines, saints and martyrs, leaders and 
emancipators, whose story lights the summit 
of human possibility, have only fulfilled God's 
expectation of them. For them and for us 
Martineau's great ascription is true; an unex- 
plored height and depth of moral grandeur, 
beauty, and achievement, in which the race 
is to be absorbed and glorified: "The rule 
of right, the symmetries of character, the re- 
quirements of perfection, are no provincialisms 

^ St. Luke's Gospel xi, 42. 

2 See also St. Luke's Gospel xvii, 10. 

[177] 



James M ar tin e au 

of this planet: they are known among the 
stars; they reign beyond Orion and the South- 
ern Cross; they are wherever the universal 
Spirit is; and no subject mind, though it 
fly on one track forever, can escape beyond 
their bounds. Just as the arrival of light 
from deeps that extinguish parallax bears wit- 
ness to the same ether there that vibrates 
here, and its spectrum reports that one chemis- 
try spans the interval, so does the law of right- 
eousness spring from its earthly base and 
embrace the empire of the heavens, the moment 
it becomes a communion between the heart of 
man and the life of God." ^ 

^ A Study of Religion, Vol. I, p. 26. 



178] 



FIFTH LECTURE 
JAMES MARTINEAU 



'Z leave the plain, I climb the height; 

No branchy thicket shelter yields; 
But blessed forms in whistling storms 

Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. 

:): ^ :{: :): 4: 4: :): 

I muse on joy that will not cease, 
Pure spaces clothed in living beams. 

Pure lilies of eternal peace. 

Whose odours haunt my dreams. 

The clouds are broken in the sky. 
And thro' the mountain^walls 
A rolling organ-harmony 

Swells up, and shakes and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod. 
Wings flutter, voices hover clear: 
' just and faithful knight of God ! 
Ride on! the prize is near.'" 

Sir Galahad.— Tennyson 



JAMES MARTINEAU 
PART II 



The point of convergence for the religious 
teaching of Hegel, Lotze, and Martineau lay 
in their united recognition of the eternal 
presence and self-revelation of God in human 
consciousness. Hegelianism has lost ground 
in recent years because the "determinism" 
which is its natural corollary minimizes sin, pre- 
cludes repentance, and weakens moral respon- 
sibility. It also fails to give any satisfactory 
account of personality, and furnishes no sub- 
stantial grounds for individual immortality. 
Lotze's Microcosmus and Martineau 's Study 
of Religion have much more in common, and 
the latter foresaw that they may eventually 
blend in the advancing tide of speculative 
thought. He spoke of Lotze as the one origi- 
nal contributor to the solution of philosophical 
religious problems — one whose constructive 
work was of the very highest and, without 
qualification, Christian. Both reached the same 
"belief in an ever-living God, a divine mind 
and will, ruling the universe and holding moral 
[181] 



James M artin e au 

relations with mankind."^ But Lotze declared 
himself a spiritual monist, by which he meant 
that there is only one substance in the universe, 
spiritual life and energy, and yet that the 
Eternal One, by a partial differentiation of his 
own essential Being, calls into existence the 
world of nature and humanity. While God 
remains immanent in all His creatures. He 
gives to these finite and dependent exist- 
ences, in progressive degrees, a real selfhood 
which culminates in man in a self-conscious- 
ness and moral freedom that enables him to 
know and even to resist God. John Fiske 
has advanced practically the same argument 
in his account of the crowning of physical with 
psychical and moral evolution, and the reve- 
lation by God in the completed man of His 
own presence and character. On the other 
hand, Martineau affirmed that for him monism, 
whether idealistic or materialistic, was tanta- 
mount to a denial of religion — at any rate in 
its logical results, though not in the conscious- 
ness of those who held it. His dualism seems 
to have arisen out of his aversion to pantheism; 
he persistently declined to believe in the iden- 
tical oneness of man and God, either here or 
hereafter. He speaks of "the sense of author- 
ity," and says that if it means anything, *'it 
means the discernment of something higher 
than we, having claims on our self — therefore 

^See Martineau's Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 410. 
[182] 



James Martineau 

no mere part of it; — hovering over and tran- 
scending our personality, though also mingling 
with our consciousness and manifested through 
its intimations." ^ Men cannot interpret this 
sentiment within their own limits; they are 
irresistibly carried on to the recognition of 
another than themselves, One who has moral 
affinity with them, yet solemn rights over them. 
We encounter this Objective Authority without 
quitting the center of our own consciousness. 
The excellency and sanctity which He recognizes 
and reports are not contingent on our accidental 
apprehension; they have their seat in eternal 
reality, they hold their quality wherever found, 
and the revelation of their authority to one 
mind is valid for all. 

Martineau traces the pathway from the 
moral consciousness to religious apprehension, 
and avows that every man is permitted to 
learn, within himself, that which "bears him 
out of himself, and raises him to the station of 
the Father of Spirits." ^ A Study of Religion 
written, as we have observed, when he had gone 
beyond his eightieth year, embodies his ripest 
meditations on the all-important theme. Its 
bases are found by him, in the native sense of 
man's moral responsibility and obligation. He 
places ethics before religion inasmuch as the 
ethical conscience reveals "the presence of an 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 104. 

2 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 105. 

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James M artine au 

authority that is in us, but superior to us, and 
which we spontaneously feel has a right to 
govern us." Thus his first concern is for the 
religion of the conscience rather than that of the 
cosmos. In the stricter sense Martineau is a 
philosophical theologian; Lotze a philosopher 
proper, the mirror of whose mind reflected 
the universe as few have done. The former 
is primarily an ethical and religious teacher 
whose metaphysic is narrowed by his beliefs 
on those issues; the latter a more inclusive 
and fundamental thinker whose range is wider, 
deeper, and firmer than Martineau's. Accord- 
ing to the latter our moral experience not 
only naturally leads us toward belief in a 
Supreme and Perfect Being, but also toward 
belief in personal immortality. These intuitive 
apprehensions are in every man; they can be 
reverenced and obeyed; and if so, our loyalty 
to them is rewarded by a larger insight and an 
enriched knowledge. In God's light such chil- 
dren of His will see light. 

But they may also be thinned out by critic- 
ally destructive processes until they become a 
mere delusion, in which there is nothing more 
than disguised self-interest or the reflection of 
a prevalent social sentiment. The two ten- 
dencies are always present and operative; 
"ethics must either perfect itself in religion or 
disintegrate itself into hedonism"; and there 
is "an inevitable gravitation in all antitheo- 
[ 184 1 



James M artine au 

logical thinkers toward 'the greatest happiness 
principle.'" Further, "if the moral relations 
when thus displayed 'and honored by us' are 
ectypal miniatures of eternal realities in God, 
it is impossible not to raise the question of their 
duration in us. There is something incongruous 
in supposing that such a communion on our 
part with an eternal Being, and a communion 
in respect of eternal verities central to His 
essence, should have just begun to know itself 
for what it is, and then be extinguished." The 
immortality of man in Martineau's thought was 
coincident with another leading principle of his 
religious system — " the Universal Incarnation." 
He states his position thus: "The Incarna- 
tion is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of 
Man universally, and God everlastingly. He 
bends into the human, to dwell there; and 
humanity is the susceptible organ of the 
divine. And the spiritual light in us which 
forms our higher life is 'of one substance' 
{ojxoovfnov) with His own Righteousness, - — its 
manifestation, with altered essence and au- 
thority, on the theater of our nature. ... Of 
this grand and universal truth Christ became 
the revealer, not by being an exceptional per- 
sonage (who could be a rule for nothing), but 
by being a signal instance of it so intense and 
impressive as to set fire to every veil that 
would longer hide it." In another connection 

^ Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, Vol. II, pp. 443-444. 
[185] 



James M artin e au 

he asks: "Is it not then a true conception 
that we see in the mind of Christ the very- 
essence of the mind of God, in what He loves 
and requires to see in us . . . the fihal devo- 
tion, the self-renunciation, the enthusiasm for all 
righteous affections which constitutes the ethics 
of all worlds? In opening to us the coessen- 
tiality with God through His own personality 
did He show us what is true of His own individ- 
uality alone? On the contrary. He stands in 
virtue of it as the spiritual head of mankind, 
and what you predicate of Him in actuality is 
predicable of all in possibility. This interpre- 
tation of His life on earth carries the divine 
essence claimed for Him into our nature as His 
brethren. In Him as our representative we 
learn our summons and receive our adoption as 
children of God." ^ By virtue of this living union 
between God and man. His highest desires and 
best affections are divine and inspired ; they are 
part of the very being of the All-wise; they 
are His perpetual self -revelation to us; and in 
them is contained the possibility of all religion. 
It is necessary to show here that Martineau's 
views on religion underwent considerable 
change. He began where his first guide and 
teacher. Dr. Priestley, had ended; for Priestley, 
although a latitudinarian, believed in the value 
and authority of the Holy Scriptures as a divine 
revelation. He sought the confirmation of 

^Martineau's Lije and Letters, Vol. II, p. 481, 
[186] 



James M artine au 

outward standards and proofs for the doctrine 
he accepted; and Martineau for a time followed 
his example. In the address he delivered before 
his ordination at Dublin he declared himself 
the servant of revelation, and spoke of "Jesus 
Christ, God's well-beloved Son." He said, "I 
acknowledge Him as the Mediator between 
God and man." He further refers to "His 
exaltation to that position which He now holds 
above all other created beings, where He lives 
evermore, and from which He shall hereafter 
judge the world in righteousness. . . . Not to 
honor Him as we honor the Father is to 
violate our allegiance to Him as the great 
Captain of our salvation." But Channing 
supplanted Priestley as the spiritual director 
of Martineau, and induced him to lay that 
stress upon conscience and the hidden man 
of the heart which now took the place of 
Priestley's insistence upon external credentials. 
Channing, too, was deposed when other dis- 
integrating influences asserted themselves, and 
one by one the articles of Martineau's original 
creed disappeared. Miracles were dispensed 
with; the resurrection was a myth; sin as a 
huge racial impediment and disaster had never 
been accepted by him. He asserted that Jesus 
never claimed to be the Messiah, and his exami- 
nation of the Gospels left few credible frag- 
ments of information about the history of Jesus. 
In 1898 he wrote: "We plainly want a New 
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Reformation to give us a religion that shall 
be tenable alike by the natural soul and by 
the cultivated mind of our age; and it can 
never be brought to the birth alive out of 
the Messianic preconceptions, or ecclesiastical 
dogmas, or physical cosmogonies; but must be 
drawn fresh, like the beatitudes, from the 
divine experiences of the Christlike soul, which 
are self-evidencing and wait for no visual 
miracle to vouch them. All that we spirit- 
ually know is thus given us in the person of 
Jesus; but not all that is told us of His person 
is of this character, or is in itself credible; and 
till the needful discrimination is effected be- 
tween these two elements, our present Gospels 
will often mislead us. For in truth they are but 
anonymous traditions, authentic mixed with 
unauthentic, current in the second century."^ 

Dr. Martineau is not so thorough and satis- 
factory in his treatment of biblical exegesis 
and the New Testament literature as he is in 
philosophy and ethics. The touch is somewhat 
unfamiliar and the dogmatic hardness assert- 
ive. His great reputation finds little support 
in some of his statements concerning the 
sources of the Christian tradition. The pro- 
found thinker is lost for the moment in the 
ardent partizan. The variations between his 
earlier and later utterances seem to make good 
the charge of unstability; but while conscious 

1 Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 244. 
[188] 



James M artine au 

of this, he explains them as the substitution 
"of reHgion at first hand, straight out of the 
immediate interaction between the soul and 
God, for religion at second hand, fetched by 
copying out of anonymous traditions of the 
eastern Mediterranean eighteen centuries ago"; 
and he adds, "This has been the really directing, 
though hardly conscious, aim of my responsible 
years of life." Dr. Davison is correct in his 
substantiation of Martineau's own statement 
that here are two religions. For the sake of 
clearness let us remember that the religion of 
the man who rejects all spiritual authority 
but that of his own reason and conscience and 
the religion of the man who finds in Christ a 
direct revelation from God are not two forms 
of one religion; they are indeed two religions, 
widely separated now, and likely to be much 
more widely separated in the not distant 
future. The majority of men grow less dog- 
matic as they approach the ripening years. In 
this one respect Martineau was an exception; 
and it is the earlier Martineau who stands 
apart from his articulated system, and pleads 
for the spirit within the wheels. To him we 
turn with relief, unwilling that the worth and 
inspiration of his religious experience, as dis- 
tinguished from his theological utterance, should 
be lost in the deepening doubts of his later 
years. Here we would fain abide with him; 
and if one apprehends him aright, he speaks 
[189] 



James M ar tin e au 

more freely and with lesser consciousness of a 
system which needs defense. He looked upon 
experience as the true test of religion and its 
legitimate sphere of verification. And experi- 
ence meant for him a genuine sense of present 
spiritual union and reality springing from indi- 
vidual surrender to God. His definition of this 
is not unlike the Evangelical doctrine of conver- 
sion; it implies an awakening which results 
in the consecration of life and all its powers. 
"The moment of its new birth is the discovery 
that your gleaming is the everlasting real: no 
transparent brush of a fancied angel's wing, 
but the abiding presence and persuasion of 
the soul of souls." It was this emphasis on 
experience which led him to say that the 
Methodists, above all others, ought to show a 
ready adaptability to the changes in modern 
thought on account of the faith they reposed 
in their consciousness of the Divine Presence. 
When the highest we know becomes more than 
ideal; when men are so vitally brought into 
contact with it that they appropriate it as a 
part of themselves, they unite their lives with 
the very life of God, and are a part of that 
historic sainthood which has done His work 
in the world. This truth and its meaning for 
those who accept and use it has a noble expres- 
sion in Martineau's parting injunction to the 
Liverpool congregation. His whole word and 
work among them, he avowed, had been deter- 
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James M artine au 

mined by his deep faith in "the Hving union of 
God with humanity." He had endeavored to 
convince his people that God is in direct touch 
with human souls, communes with their spirits, 
and listens to their prayers. He is a God that 
is not only far off, but here; He can be seen 
and met on earth. He is not only in the "flash- 
ing scorn" and "bursting frown of thunder," 
but He speaks to each waiting soul in His 
still small voice. "Here is the dear and mighty 
God at home. . . . Day by day, from morn to 
night, under our roof tree and out upon the fields, 
in the mind that thinks, in the heart that 
aspires, in the nation that strives for the right, 
in the world that moves on its course. He lives 
with us, and manifests himself through us, with 
every variety of good." ^ Nor were such senti- 
ments confined to his sermons and addresses; 
they permeate all his works, and especially the 
great chapter on "Natural and Revealed Re- 
ligion" contained in A Study of Religion. In 
this he shows that all the interpretations of 
naturalistic religion empty the term "religion" 
of "every idea of personal and moral relation- 
ship between the human soul and God." He 
dwells on these relations continually, and even 
where they appear to be overshadowed by his 
philosophical ideas he is unconscious of the 
inconsistency. 
But what of sin, death, and the future? 

^Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, Vol. IV, p. 521. 
[ 191 ] 



James M artine au 

How did he regard these ? The reply is, with a 
sternness which no serious preacher could exceed. 
Mr. R. H. Hutton says that Martineau's sermon 
on Christ's Treatment of Guilt inspired him with 
"the fear of hell." One passage reads : "In 
many a hospital of mental disease you have 
doubtless seen a melancholy being, pacing to and 
fro with rapid strides and lost to everything 
around; wringing his hands in incommunicable 
suffering, and letting fall a low mutter rising 
quickly into the shrill cry; his features cut with 
the graver of sharp anguish : his eyelids drooping 
and showering ever scalding tears. It is the 
maniac of remorse. . . . He is the dread type 
of hell. He is absolutely sequestered, as many 
minds may be hereafter, incarcerated alone with 
his memories of objects and unaware of time; 
and every guilty soul may find itself standing 
alone in a theater peopled with the collected 
images of the ills that he has done; and, turn 
where he may, the features he has made sad 
with grief, the eyes he has lighted with passion, 
the infant faces he has suffused with needless 
tears, stare upon him with insufferable fixed- 
ness." And if thus the past be truly inde- 
structible ; if thus its fragments may be 
regathered; if its details of evil thought and 
act may be thus brought together and fused 
into one big agony, — it may be left to fools 
to make a mock of sin. Whatever the liberal 
theologians have said about sin as merely a 
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James M artine au 

mistake, and retribution as an idea culled from 
the ethics of the nursery, it is clear that he 
regarded sin as a terrible fact, to be followed 
by a suffering which the sinner has wholly 
brought upon himself. 

It was his genuine sense of present spiritual 
union with God, of the fellowship which 
springs from surrender to His love and grace, 
of the hatefulness of sin and the terror of its 
consequences, that made Martineau impatient 
with the sickly talk about ideals which has 
become the commonplace of our age. "It 
is well to remember that, so long as they are 
dreams of future possibility and not faiths in 
present realities, . . . they have no more solid- 
ity or steadiness than floating air-bubbles, gay 
in the sunshine and broken by the passing 
wind. You do not so much as touch the 
threshold of religion so long as you are detained 
by the phantoms of your thought," Men 
must realize their divine nature, not in a merely 
sympathetic way, but as an organic and 
organizing conviction ordering all their life 
and conduct; and, short of this, there is no 
worthy object given to them, they have not 
even reached the specific point of admiration. 
"Within the limits of pure sincerity no one can 
worship either a nature beneath him or an idea 
within him, however big may be the one . . . 
and however fine may be the other." ^ 

'^ Martineau' s Life and Letters, Vol. II, pp. 418, 419. 
[193] 



James M artin e au 

n 

All religious philosophies are the attempt 
of the human mind to discover the deeper 
foundations of being, and the processes by 
which man apprehends the truth, and by 
which through experience the Temple of Faith 
is built. In prosecuting his researches in these 
problems Martineau evinced a profound in- 
sight, coupled with an imaginative daring and 
a skill in the arts of literary craftsmanship 
which give his works unique distinction. The 
"Religion of Causation" may be arrived at 
from the ascertained facts of science, and this 
gives us an idea of God as the Creator of all: 
but the result is derived, not immediate; it is 
logical, not intuitional; and, on this ground, 
for him it loses value. He goes so far as 
to reason in the same way concerning con- 
science, which naturally inclines to Theism, 
and from which one may proceed to establish 
the fact of an All-righteous Ruler. This, again, 
is a logical via media. Neither of these argu- 
ments from science or conscience, singly or 
together, gives any adequate meaning to re- 
ligion. And it is owing to their deficiencies 
that the religion of the spirit demands unham- 
pered communion between the human and the 
divine, an intercourse that goes beyond the 
spheres of natural and even moral law. Mar- 
tineau hardly does justice to the fact that any 
[ 194 ] 



James M artine au 

religious belief — whether described as the re- 
ligion of conscience or of causation, whether 
immediate or derived in the methods of its 
apprehension and appropriation — is due to the 
all-pervading life of God. Granted that some 
men's temperament and actual pursuits lead 
them to an inferential knowledge of God reached 
by argumentation, is He not their guide as well 
as their goal? Why separate God's immediate 
presence from these things ? He is the God of 
the rationalizing Aristotle as well as of the intui- 
tive Plato. But Martineau had a deep convic- 
tion that, if God were not found within the 
human spirit, He would not be found beyond 
it; and also a fear that, under much prevalent 
rationalizing, the Blessed Name, so personal 
and real to him, would come to stand for the 
order of nature, inviolable, yet blind. Similarly 
the moral ideal becomes merely human, a gen- 
eral conviction of what ought to be; and as 
soon as the living intercourse with the Divine 
is forfeited, this ideal loses its charm and 
power. In those churches where the living 
and immediate presence of Jehovah is denied 
or ignored, the worship of God ceases, and dis- 
courses on science, art, literature, and history 
usurp the place of genuine devotion. These 
are praiseworthy pursuits, but they never appear 
more distasteful than when presented in the 
threadbare and colorless garments of a Religion 
supposed to be dead. In a letter to the Rev. 
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Charles Wicksteed, Nov. 20, 1876, deploring 
the general trend of prevailing Unitarianism, he 
wrote: "I have nearly come to the conclusion 
that we are on the downward path and nearing 
the last stage of our religious history. Religion, 
once drifting away from the Personality of God 
and resolved into Moral Idealism (and this is 
the tendency with our young men), loses all 
that is distinctive and melts into general culture. 
From this fate the Churches are protected which, 
finding their center of gra^dty in the Incarna- 
tion, unite the Divine and the Human in the 
representative of our nature, and construe our 
own moral phenomena into personal relations 
with the All-holy Mind. I see in this a germ 
of fruitfulness; in the other, only a spreading 
barrenness." ^ 

The tracing of will as the one force in the 
universe is a fine philosophical performance, yet 
glittering with those sparkling phrases which 
darkened the discourse by reason of excessive 
light, and displaying a logic that makes one 
smile because of its adroitness. We are taken 
safely through deep metaphysical waters; we 
do battle vicariously with Tyndall, Huxley, 
Spencer, and the other critics of Theism; we 
consider the pros and cons of every dispute 
that marked the nineteenth century; and more 
often than not we say "aye" to Martineau. 
True, he indulges in speculative ventures which 

^ Martineau's Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 32. 
[196] 



James M artine au 

do not convince us, as, for instance, in his treat- 
ment of the almightiness and omniscience of 
God. He taught that the term "almighty" is 
"warranted only if it is content to cover all the 
might there is ; and must not be understood to 
mean mighty for absolutely all things." Again, 
in discussing moral evil, he says that, "notwith- 
standing the supreme causality of God, it is 
rigorously true that only in a very restricted 
sense can He be held the author of moral evil. 
He is no doubt the source of its possibility." 
As a sequel to these views he held the one on the 
limitation of God's knowledge; for he claimed 
that omniscience has limited itself with regard 
to the details of human action. The dualism 
of Martineau is the origin of these defects 
in his Theism. His emphasis on the person- 
ality and the will of man is so strong that he 
is obliged to make room for their original actions 
by modifying the all-power and all-knowledge 
of the Deity; and he does this on the ground 
that the very problem of knowledge, as solved 
by the best minds, demands a Me and a not- 
Me, not only now, but hereafter. The issue 
is highly speculative, and need not detain us 
here; it is, however, an illustration of the 
thoroughness with which he goes to the root of 
things and of the honesty with which he states 
his conclusions. We do not wish to suggest that 
Martineau's pages are full of mediaeval sub- 
tleties, but simply that he seldom shirked a diffi- 
[1971 



James M artin e au 

culty and never hesitated to pronounce an 
opinion. 

His great service to Christianity is twofold: 
the consolidating of Theism on a philosophical 
basis, and the convincing declaration that the 
self-revealing presence of God is in all men. 
This idea was never absent from his mind. 
To him it was the one important thing, and, for 
the sake of establishing its foundations more 
firmly than before, he undertook the work of 
defending Theism against the attacks of its 
enemies, and of justifying its great truths in 
the areas of reason. Seldom do we meet in 
one personality a union of the preacher, the 
literary artist, the theologian, and the philoso- 
pher ; yet these qualities were strikingly united 
in James Martineau. Not that his appeal 
was addressed to all men; he never hoped to 
do so much. His message, as we have hinted, 
was defective for those in whom vicious and 
degenerate impulses prevail. They need the 
regenerating and encompassing power of a 
more vital and complete religion. It was for 
such sheep, lost and shepherdless, that Christ 
Jesus gave Himself. They were His peculiar 
care, and in their behalf He proclaimed a gospel 
which Martineau did not fully understand, ex- 
pound, or enforce, although he faithfully dis- 
charged the duty of giving Christianity a 
more adequate philosophical setting. Had he 
mingled with the common people in their 
[198 1 



James M artine au 

daily struggle, he would have found that the 
actual conditions of human necessity demand 
a concrete and positive evangel, and that even 
in other and higher spheres men frequently 
conquer not so much by native intuitions as 
by the divine aggression of an overwhelming 
and transforming power. This type of saint- 
hood, of which Paul, Augustine, Luther, and 
Wesley are prominent examples, was at once 
transferred from the kingdom of darkness into 
that of light. Nor can we form any right 
estimate of Christian teaching unless we take 
our stand for a comprehensive induction which 
shall cover all the facts of that historic trans- 
ference. 

But there are men specially called to think 
of God, freedom and Immortality, and among 
these Martineau will take a high place. Amid 
the jangle of conflicting creeds and churches he 
did a saving work by enabling many to plant 
their feet on the immovable rock, by giving 
them the wisdom of things in their true pro- 
portion, and by showing the signs of genuine 
authority. Popes and priesthoods, Bible su- 
premacies and ecclesiastical groups, are passed 
in review, until he arrives at the soul of man 
himself, by which at times he seems to mean 
Emerson's "oversoul," that "vast, living, mov- 
ing, inspiring, progressive spirit which is leading 
us all into light, wisdom, and truth." It has 
a place in the outer world of nature, but 
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Jatnes M artin e au 

chiefly resides in man, "whose spirit is the 
audience-chamber of the Eternal." From it 
sprang all religions, literatm-es, chm-ches, and 
creeds, and by it they must be served and 
made effectual. Men ascend to the heights 
and descend to the depths in search of a resting- 
place for their beliefs, when the word is nigh 
them, in their hearts and in their conscience, 
if they can but believe. A mother's love, he 
avers, affords a truer glimpse of God than 
Calvin's stern and elaborated logic, and the 
purity of the human is the window through 
which men see the Divine. It is in the presence 
of such higher natures that we are enabled to 
stimulate the springs of action till they become 
the dynamic of a realized holiness in life and 
deed. 

m 

In some respects the work of Schleiermacher 
in Germany was paralleled by Martineau's 
work in England. The moral sense was his 
favorite subject of interpretation, as the emo- 
tions were of Schleiermacher. Neither could 
conceive of religion save in terms of the sub- 
jective consciousness and apart from anything 
external. The mysticism which is found in 
Martineau's life and philosophy, bright, clear, 
and intellectual though they are, is very real, 
and suggests many comparisons with the famous 
German preacher and theologian. Martineau's 
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James M artine au 

philosophical system is by no means free from 
difficulties, as we have seen; and, in spite of 
the value of his constructive Theism, he can- 
not be said to have founded a new school of 
thought. His marvelous play of rhetoric is em- 
ployed to set forth the older ideas, which are 
displayed to the utmost advantage in his pages. 
In years to come he will not live through the 
philosophical treatises, although they will be 
found on the shelves of serious students; the 
books which will bring him nearest to the 
hearts of Christian people are his devotional 
works. These volumes are the output of a 
profound mind and a large heart; one knows 
not whether the feeling is deeper than the 
thought, or the thought deeper than the feel- 
ing. And if the instinctive recognition of God 
and truth as taught by him is mystic rather 
than rational in method, it would be difficult 
to overestimate the corrective value of so elo- 
quent a pleading for the religion of the heart 
as contrasted with the crudities of the gospel of 
"following nature" or of obeying the behests 
of any social group. He lived at a time when 
science in some associations was raising its head 
all too proudly, and what it did not scornfully 
despise in religion was left to the sneers of a 
pseudo-philosophy. Against this Goliath the 
author of The Seat of Authority in Religion 
was a valiant David; yet his significance for 
the future does not consist in acute arguments, 
[201] 



James M artin e au 

lofty appeals, or chiseled phrases, but in his 
ability to arouse the dormant consciousness 
of the Divine within us. It is a great work 
to save some superior intellect from doubt and 
despair, and this Martineau has repeatedly done. 
But the thoughtful though not fastidiously criti- 
cal reader will most esteem the revelation of 
the inner light as contained in Martineau's ser- 
mons — sermons which are already numbered 
among the treasures of devotional literature. 

A philosophy is sure to have its vulnerable 
parts. Professor Pattison asserts that Mar- 
tineau's view of conscience is peculiar and now 
out of date; while Professor Carpenter suggests 
that his essential work as a thinker was done 
before the Origin of Species appeared, and was a 
brilliant setting of previous Scottish intuition- 
alism. Even Martineau himself admits that 
metaphysics only reinstates us where we in- 
tuitively stood. On the processes of conscience 
Martineau may be out of date, but on the inner 
light he will continue to live; for this is a truth 
that can never die, from it we feel and reason 
toward the living Cause and the living Right- 
eousness. The sense of obligation, which is the 
fundamental ethical fact, is also the chief bond 
which unites morals and religion; and certain 
elements of our own consciousness give ground 
for the inference that all power and perfection 
coalesce in a personal and omnipotent Being. 
This intellectual and moral rationalism rests on 
[2021 



James M artin e au 

our intuitions, and the very constitution of the 
human soul provides for an immediate appre- 
hension of the Creator. A scrutiny of the by- 
ways of modern theology shows that these ideas 
are gaining ground; and although they some- 
times assume erratic forms, and find embodi- 
ment in bizarre language, they indicate that 
what is called "the God within" is only a popu- 
lar rendering of Martineau's intuitionalism and 
his teaching concerning the innate goodness of 
the human heart. It is to be regretted that 
fantasy and extravagance should invade the 
realm of divine truth; but no period has been 
free from their harmful influences, and the 
presence of a travesty is, after all, an evidence 
that the reality exists. Whatever defects we 
think we see in the teaching of James Mar- 
tineau; as a man of God, as a preacher and 
writer, as an honest seeker after truth, he stands 
almost peerless among his contemporaries. An 
American minister wrote to him a few years 
before his death, asking him how in old age he 
regarded the world and his own Church. His 
reply was that, had he to live by sight of the 
prevailing social and spiritual tendencies, he 
would breathe his parting word more in tune 
with Jeremiah than Isaiah. He had less and 
less hope every year of Unitarianism participa- 
ting in the future of English religious history. 
"But," he continued, "all the divine possibili- 
ties remain locked in our humanity, and are 
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James M ar tin e au 

sure, either here or there, to free themselves into 
reahzation. Resting in this, I can lay to sleep 
all impatient haste, and wait His time." 

Martineau's life was in many ways a sus- 
tained and noble triumph. He struck hard and 
he struck home at the materialism which was 
waning when his chief works appeared. He 
aided the evolutionary theory in defeating the 
cold and mechanical Deism of the early nine- 
teenth century. Although he contended for the 
divine immanence, he never lost his grasp on 
the transcendent God. His Theism suffered 
no approach to Pantheism. The religious his- 
tory of mankind is indebted to his positive 
teaching, and to his earnest and encouraging 
attitude on those questions which must always 
occupy the thought of men and women who 
ponder the deep things of God. We take leave 
of this chosen servant of the Highest Will in his 
own words — words in which he argues for 
the life of immortality beyond, words which 
have a direct meaning for his own illustrious 
character and services: 

"I do not know that there is anything in 
nature (unless indeed it be the reputed blotting 
out of suns in the stellar heavens) which can 
be compared in wastefulness with the extinction 
of great minds: their gathered resources, their 
matured skill, their luminous insight, their 
unfailing tact, are not like instincts that can 
be handed down; they are absolutely personal 
[204] 



James M artine au 

and inalienable, grand conditions of future 
power unavailable for the race, and perfect for 
an ulterior growth of the individual. If that 
growth is not to be, the most brilliant genius 
bursts and vanishes as a firework in the night. 
A mind of balanced and finished faculties is a 
production at once of infinite delicacy and of 
most enduring constitution; lodged in a fast- 
perishing organism, it is like a perfect set of 
astronomical instruments, misplaced in an 
observatory shaken by earthquakes or caving 
in with decay. The lenses are true, the mirrors 
without a speck, the movements smooth, the 
micrometers exact: what shall the Master do 
but save the precious system, refined with so 
much care, and build for it a new house that 
shall be founded on a 'rock' ?" 



[205] 



SIXTH LECTURE 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 



God knows it, I am with you ! If to prize 
Those virtues, prized and practised by too few. 
But prized, but loved, but eminent in you, 
Man's fundamental life; if to despise 
The barren optimistic sophistries 
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do 
Teaches the limit of the just and true 
{And for such doing they require not eyes); 
If sadness at the long heart-wasting show 
Wherein earth's great ones are disquieted; 
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow 
The armies of the homeless and unfed, — 
7/ these are yours, if this is what you are. 
Then am I yours, and what you feel I share. 

Arnold. — To a Republican Friend. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 
PART I 



WHEN Thomas Arnold became a candidate 
for the Head-Mastership of Rugby, Dr. 
Hawkins, provost of Oriel College, Oxford, pre- 
dicted that if he were elected " he would change 
the face of education all through the public 
schools of England." This he did, not so much 
by his erudition as by the power of his conta- 
gious personality. The morale and discipline 
of his pupils made Rugby an object-lesson for 
all similar institutions, and when men spoke 
of the place they thought of Arnold. Such 
celebrities as Dean Stanley, A. H. Clough, 
Thomas Hughes, and his own son Matthew, 
were known as "Arnold's men," — a sufficient 
testimony in itself to the weighty influence of 
the teacher who impressed himself so deeply 
upon them. In his later life he was appointed 
Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, 
where his lectures attracted considerable atten- 
tion. He held authoritative views on the 
general state of the nation which affected the 
religion, education, and politics of the times. 
As a teacher he stood high, and as a preacher 
[209] 



Matthew Arnold 

even higher. He was a man of deep feeling, 
great dignity, and an almost overwhelming 
strength of nature. Yet that nature was 
ardent and affectionate, and animated by a 
keen sense of justice. He was singularly pure 
in motive and sincere in aim, and his literary 
style indicated these qualities. It was manly 
and robust, the fitting expression of a brilliant, 
learned, and generous mind. All his gifts 
were concentrated in the work for the forma- 
tion of the character of the youth of his 
country. By means of one public school he 
changed to an appreciable degree the super- 
structure of British society, and that change 
was transmitted in a measure to the empire 
over whose destinies Britain presides. 

His eldest son, Matthew, was born on 
Christmas eve, 1822, at Laleham on the River 
Thames, a quiet retreat midway between 
Staines and Chertsey. Towering beyond these 
towns is the bold front of Windsor's "sovran 
hill," crowned with the royal residence, and 
looking down upon Henry VI's famous founda- 
tion of Eton, Arnold's inherent love of nature 
was quickened by the beautiful pastoral sce- 
nery of the Thames valley. He visited his 
birthplace in 1848, and wrote to his sister, 
"Yesterday I was at Chertsey, the poetic town 
of our childhood. ... It is across the river, 
reached by no bridges and roads, but by the 
primitive ferry, the meadow path, the Abbey 
[2101 



Matthew Arnold 

River with its wooden bridge, and the narrow 
lane by the old wall." 

During the whole of his life, and especially 
after the death of his father, the remarkable 
character and gifts of Arnold's mother made 
her the chosen companion and correspondent 
of her children. Her ancestral home was at 
Fox How in the Lake Country, where she 
spent more than thirty years of widowhood, 
in close proximity to Wordsworth and the 
rest of the Lake poets. Matthew naturally 
developed a warm admiration for Wordsworth, 
and in later life he became his penetrating and 
sympathetic interpreter. 

Beyond this bare outline, little is known 
of Arnold's schooldays and earlier manhood. 
His letters are the only sources of information; 
but these do not indulge in retrospect, and 
before his thirtieth year they supply nothing 
of moment. Even the origin of his first poems 
is shrouded in mystery, and it is now impossible 
for us to scan the psychological background 
of these adventures into literature. Begin- 
ning his school life at Laleham, he was after- 
ward sent to Winchester, and in August, 1837, 
followed his father to Rugby. Here he obtained 
the prize for his poem Alaric at Rome; and in 
1840 he was awarded an open scholarship at 
Balliol College, Oxford. He had been at the 
University only one year when the lamented 
death of his father changed in many respects 
[ 211 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

the current of his Hfe. It has been suggested 
that there might have been a lack of intel- 
lectual sympathy between the two; but this 
is scarcely worthy of credence, for it is extremely 
doubtful whether the later critic of dogma could 
have foreseen at such an early period the 
extent to which his independent thought would 
eventually take him.^ Certainly the references 
to his father breathe nothing save exceptional 
tenderness and filial affection, of which the 
poem Rugby Chapel is a lasting monument. 
Standing before his father's tomb, he asks the 
question : 

"O strong soul, by what shore 
Tarriest thou now? For that force. 
Surely, has not been left vain! 
Somewhere, surely, afar. 
In the sounding labor-house vast 
Of being, is practised that strength. 
Zealous, beneficent, firm! 



And through thee I believe 

In the noble and great who are gone; 

Pure souls honor'd and blest 

By former ages, who else — 

Such, so soulless, so poor, 

Is the race of men whom I see — 

Seem'd but a dream of the heart, 

Seem'd but a cry of desire. 

Yes ! I believe that there lived 

Others like thee in the past, 

Not like the men of the crowd 

Who all round me to-day 

Bluster or cringe, and make life 

^ See W. H. Dawson's Matthew Arnold, pp. 156-157. 
[212] 



Matthew Arnold 

Hideous, and arid, and vile ; 
But souls temper'd with fire, 
Fervent, heroic, and good, 
Helpers and friends of mankind." 

During Arnold's university days the Trac- 
tarian Movement was passing into the troubled 
period which culminated in the withdrawal of 
John Henry Newman from the Anglican 
Church. To quote his own phrase, Newman 
"was upon his death-bed," so far as member- 
ship in that communion was concerned. This, 
however, was known only to few, and a certain 
awe and wonder continued to encircle the 
figure of the great preacher. His four-o'clock 
sermons at St. Mary's drew the University 
to his feet. Arnold watched the convulsion 
of the religious life of the Establishment which 
followed Newman's retirement to Littlemore, 
without evincing any marked interest. Doubt- 
less he had inherited from his father a strong 
aversion to Newman as a teacher and Trac- 
tarianism as a movement. His chosen friends 
in college were John Duke Coleridge, after- 
ward Lord Chief Justice of England, and 
John Campbell Shairp, the author of an excel- 
lent biography of Burns, and Principal of St. 
Andrews University, Scotland. Of the Oxford 
Arnold knew seventy years ago there is little 
left to-day. The Royal Commission appointed 
in 1850 to reform the Universities ended a formal 
organization which had been in existence since 
[2131 



Matthew Arnold 

the Middle Ages. But Balliol in the early 
forties, as now, was distinguished for its in- 
tellectual activity; and its Master, Dr. Jenkins, 
conserved with commendable energy the highest 
interests of the college. 

In 1843 Arnold won the Newdigate prize 
with a poem on Cromwell. He and Tennyson 
reversed the rule that college rewards for poetry 
do not fall to poets. Yet there is no particular 
reason why Arnold should have been an excep- 
tion so far as the merit of Cromwell is concerned; 
in fact, it is scarcely equal to Alaric at Rome. 
The Byronic atmosphere pervades the earlier 
poem, and a Wordsworthian flavor is distinctly 
perceptible in the Newdigate; but we search 
in vain for any throb of inspiration in the undis- 
turbed serenity of these youthful rhymings. 
A glimpse of Arnold's university days is ob- 
tained in the records of a debating society 
called "The Decade," the rallying-ground of a 
small coterie of controversialists who, to quote 
the words of one of them, fought to the stumps 
of their intellects. As a student he did only 
moderately well; but his strength and promise 
were recognized by his election to an Oriel 
fellowship in 1845, an honor which would have 
gladdened the heart of his father had he lived 
to see it, and which had previously been be- 
stowed upon that father, upon Newman, and 
Dean Church. He shared with every son of 
Oxford the ardent devotion they freely give to 
[214] 



Matthew Arnold 

her, and he expressed it in a memorable pas- 
sage which one cannot refrain from quoting at 
length: 

"Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, 
so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of 
our century, so serene! 

' There are our young barbarians, all at play ! ' 

And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, 
spreading her gardens to the moonlight, 
and whispering from her towers the last en- 
chantments of the Middle Age, who will deny 
that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps 
ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all 
of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, 
in a word, which is only truth seen from another 
side? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science 
of Tubingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart 
has been so romantic! who hast given thyself 
so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to 
heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! 
home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and 
unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! 
what example could ever so inspire us to keep 
down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher 
could ever so save us from that bondage to 
which we are all prone, that bondage which 
Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death 
of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise 
(and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to 
have left miles out of sight behind him; — the 
[215 1 



Matthew Arnold 

bondage of ' was uns alle bdndigt, Das Gemeine ! ' 
She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly 
drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her un- 
worthy son; for she is generous, and the cause 
in which I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions 
of a day, what is our puny warfare against the 
Philistines, compared with the warfare which 
this queen of romance has been waging against 
them for centuries, and will wage after we are 
gone?" ^ 

Notwithstanding this outburst, Oxford and 
Arnold were meant to dwell apart; he could 
not content himself to become a typical college 
don. He was too much a lover of society, his 
outlook was too wide and varied, his interests 
too numerous, and his temper too anti-clerical 
for this sort of dignified retirement. The posi- 
tion not only conflicted with his inclinations, 
it offended his pride. His self-consciousness 
clashed with the calm, majestic predominance 
of the University, and his restless and aspiring 
spirit chafed under the restraint of her conserv- 
atism. He obtained a classical tutorship at 
Rugby, where he served for a short time under 
Archibald Campbell Tait, afterward the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. Thus he began, in his 
father's school, and with his father's successor, 
his lifelong connection with education. In 1847 
he acted as private secretary to Lord Lans- 
downe, an aristocratic patron of young men of 

^ Preface to Essays in Criticism, First Series. 
[216] 



Matthew Arnold 

talent, who was quick to recognize the parha- 
mentary ambitions of Macaulay, and who gave 
Arnold the only start in life he owed to any one 
beyond himself. In 1851 Lansdowne secured 
for him an appointment as Government inspec- 
tor of schools; and he became at twenty-eight 
years of age, what he afterward remained, prac- 
tically an independent man. The work was 
uncongenial and the remuneration scanty; yet 
he could make a considerable reservation of 
his time and energy for literary pursuits, and 
on the whole it proved sufficient for his neces- 
sities. His marriage to the daughter of Mr. 
Justice Wightman followed shortly after his 
appointment to the inspectorship. He was 
called to the Bar, but limited his legal practice 
to attending the interesting cases over which 
his father-in-law presided. The remainder of 
his days was preempted by domestic joys and 
sorrows and the duties of his office. He was 
fortunate in that he could arrange at will the 
extent of his employment; and while he would 
have been an ideal candidate for any public 
office which would have left him freer to follow 
his bent, he was delivered from the ill fortune 
of some who have had equal gifts and less 
opportunity. 

II 

As a poet, Arnold wrote in a period of poeti- 
cal restriction, when the province of prose had 

[2171 



Matthew Arnold 

been enlarged by such picturesque and musical 
stylists as Landor, Carlyle, and Ruskin. This 
extension marks a natural development of lan- 
guage. Men first express themselves in poetical 
terms, later in those of prose, and afterward 
these coalesce. But the coalition somewhat 
contracted the line of English poetry. This 
contraction may not have been perceptible at 
the time, for it is only when an age has gone 
forward that the literature which reflects it can 
be adequately estimated. It is therefore pre- 
mature to hazard any final opinion respecting 
Arnold's rank among his fellow poets. Pro- 
fessor R. Y. Tyrell warns us against such hasty 
assignments in his article on "Our Debt to 
Latin Poetry as Distinguished from the Greek." 
He says: "From the earliest dawn of letters to 
the incipient decay in the Silver Age we meet 
with formal attestations, and from good au- 
thority too, that men who are now to us mere 
names once had the fame of a Milton or a 
Tennyson. Nepos refers to a poet of whom he, 
a responsible critic, is able to say, 'I can well 
affirm that he is our most brilliant poet since 
Lucretius and Catullus.' Of whom is he speak- 
ing? Of one Julius Calidus, of whose existence 
we should have been unaware but for this pas- 
sage. Tibullus, who ought to know, tells us 
that no one, not even Virgil, . . . ' came nearer 
to the immortal Homer' than one Valgius. But 
for the caprice of time we might now be quot- 
[ 218 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

ing from Calid and Valge as from Lucan and 
Virgil. Thus does fame scatter with indifferent 
hand the lam*els of triumph and the poppies of 
obhvion." ^ Chastened by the reflections this 
criticism excites, the layman in literary mat- 
ters can do little except name Byron, Shelley, 
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning as the 
representatives in that great succession of which 
Shakespeare and Milton are the hierarchs. How 
much which the modern group has written will 
survive must be left to the cooler judgment of 
posterity. Contemporary opinions upon them 
may be reversed, and again they may be con- 
firmed and even increased. The order of their 
merit cannot be settled now; we cannot even 
say with certainty who will find a place in the 
lists future generations will endorse. 

So far as Arnold is concerned, he impresses 
us with his breadth, for he toiled in every field 
of literature. But poetry was his first love, and 
his ideals concerning it were elevated. His 
most conspicuous note was clearness; "and 
to clearness he added singular grace, great 
skill in phrase-making, great aptitude for 
beautiful description, perfect naturalness, abso- 
lute ease." ^ His touch has delicacy and sub- 
dued charm; but his verse lacks popular fiber, 
because he is swayed by ideas rather than 
by sublime moods. He defines poetry as a 

1 See Nineteenth Century, April, 1911. 

2 G. W. E. Russell's, Matthew Arnold (1904), p. 9. 

[2191 



Matthew Arnold 

twofold interpretation: "it interprets by ex- 
pressing with magical felicity the physiognomy 
and movement of the outer world," and by ex- 
pressing "with inspired conviction the ideas 
and laws of the inward world of man's moral 
and spiritual life." ^ That he did not round 
out his practice to the boundaries of his theory 
is nothing against him; nor is the further fact 
that he wrote his greatest poem, The Scholar 
Gypsy, when he was thirty years of age, and 
that after 1867, when New Poems appeared, he 
wrote poetry sparingly. The height of his ideals 
might have provoked this sterility, although it 
has been otherwise explained. His friends say 
that the elegiac spirit, which was his special 
gift, was harassed by his official responsibilities; 
or, again, that he was frozen into silence by 
the neglect and indifference with which his 
verse was treated. But had his poetic vein 
been sufficiently full-blooded, it should have 
proved superior to these restraints. His was 
not inevitable poetry, like that of Burns, 
leaping forth and submerging all obstacles; it 
was essentially critical in soul and substance, 
and, despite the exquisiteness of the quality, 
the flow was intermittent. The three canons 
of Milton, that poetry should be simple, sen- 
suous, and passionate, cannot be applied to 
Arnold's verse. 

He disliked romanticism, and deplored its 

^ Introduction to Essays in Criticism, First Series. 
[2201 



Matthew Arnold 

excess in the early nineteenth-century poets. 
They were forced to indulge in it to cover their 
impoverished resources; did they know more, 
they would imagine less. In regard to forms 
of expression, he urged that there was no surer 
test of excellent poetry than constantly to 
keep in one's own mind the choice lines of the 
greater poets, and to apply these as a touch- 
stone to other claimants. The restrained and 
severe purity of his diction reveals his close 
observance of this rule. With the possible 
exception of Milton, Arnold was better ac- 
quainted with the best that poets have uttered 
from Homer downward than any other English 
author. He said that the Byronic school had 
plenty of energy, and creative force, but was 
not sufficiently aware of the classical poets and 
dramatists. This cannot be charged against his 
work; for it was saturated with them, so much 
so that some one has declared a classical educa- 
tion necessary to understand him. This is an 
exaggeration; yet, unless the reader's knowl- 
edge is fairly comprehensive and his taste for 
correct and applicable speech well founded and 
refined, he is not likely to enjoy Arnold. His 
chief appeal is to the truly educated; to those 
in whom the fruits of knowledge have suf- 
ficiently ripened to enable them to appreciate 
his subtle thought and delicate shades of mean- 
ing. He stands in the nineteenth century, an 
entreating mediator between the ideals and 
[2211 



Matthew Arnold 

forms of Hellenic thought and expression and 
those of the modern period. Sir Henry Maine's 
sweeping assertion that, except the blind forces 
of nature, nothing moves in this world which 
is not Greek in its origin, would not have 
received Arnold's assent; for he deplored the 
prevalence of the Hebraic spirit. In so far as 
his genius permitted, he pealed forth at inter- 
vals a music full of recurrent significance and 
echoing the best traditions of the Attic masters. 
On the 21st of July, 1849, he published the 
Sonnet Addressed to the Hungarian Nation. 
This did no more to advance his standing than 
Alaric at Rome or Cromwell had done to indi- 
cate his powers. The Strayed Reveler and Other 
Poems appeared in the same year; Empedocles 
on Etna in 1852; and the first volume that bore 
his name in 1853. The last publication was 
entitled Poems; it was a reprint of the former 
editions, with some omissions and such impor- 
tant additional compositions as Sohrab and 
Rustum, The Church of Brou, Requiescat, and 
The Scholar Gypsy. These poems are among 
the best products of the intellectual movement 
which prevailed from 1850 to 1870. The sense 
of impending change was then everywhere 
present. Science, about to accept evolution, 
was awakening from its dogmatic slumber; art 
was reviving under the influence of the Pre- 
Raphaelites; Anglican ecclesiasticism was look- 
ing toward medisevalism ; and English thought 
[ 222 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

was dominated by the German philosophers. 
These movements weighed down the poetry of 
Arnold. He wrote for an epoch in which the 
current doctrines of religion, politics, and the 
social system were ahke decaying; and, lack- 
ing the confident optimism and intellectual 
breadth of Browning, he stood mournful and 
mute with no positive message for his age. 
It was a time when there was no shelter to 
grow ripe, no leisure to grow wise. The con- 
flict and complexity oppressed him; and while 
he hoped for a reconciliation and an adjustment, 
it was in a melancholy way, and he offered no 
solution for the difficulties of the situation. 
We should expect to find that his tone is 
in harmony with these conceptions, refined, 
thoughtful, sad. And so it is ; even Rugby 
Chapel is tinged with this catholic pensiveness. 
While he admired Wordsworth, sharing his 
love of nature with inborn passion, devoting 
one of the best of his critical essays to him, 
and making the finest selection from his poetry 
that we possess, he nevertheless viewed the 
calm and trust of the Lake Poet as an aspira- 
tion rather than an attainment — an aspiration 
which the new age and its conditions did not 
favor. His famous dictum that poetry is a 
criticism of life may be construed as meaning 
that poetry is the crowning fruit of a criticism 
of life, and consequently that the value of his 
poetry consists in the truth and beauty of 
[223] 



Matthew Arnold 

his generalizations.^ These are filled with the 
yearning desire for all which might have been. 
We see it plainly in Resignation, a poem of his 
early volume, and again in Stanzas from the 
Grande Chartreuse. 

"Enough, we live! — and if a life. 
With large results so little rife. 
Though bearable, seems hardly worth 
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; 
Yet, Fausta! the mute turf we tread. 
The solemn hills around us spread. 
This stream which falls incessantly. 
The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky. 
If I might lend their life a voice. 
Seem to bear rather than rejoice. 
And even could the intemperate prayer 
Man iterates, while these forbear. 
For movement, for an ampler sphere. 
Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear; 
Not milder is the general lot 
Because our spirits have forgot. 
In action's dizzying eddy whirl'd. 
The something that infects the world."' 



Our fathers water'd with their tears 
This sea of time whereon we sail; 
Their voices were in all men's ears 
Who passed within their puissant hail. 
Still the same ocean round us raves. 
But we stand mute, and watch the waves."' 

This oppression is frequently associated with 
his outlook on 

^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition. Vol. II, p. 638. 

2 The Poetical Works of Arnold (1895), p. 61. 

^ Ihid., Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, pp. 321-322. 

[224] 



Matthew Arnold 

"The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,"^ 

five words whose haunting beauty can hardly 
be surpassed in any language. Its falling 
tides on Dover Beach arouse in him the pain- 
ful sense of the lessening of religious faith: 

"The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd; 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
Retreating to the breath 
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world." ^ 

The lucidity and thorough craftsmanship of 
Arnold's poetry could not overcome the dislike 
of the average mind for such an attitude as is 
here described. Yet better things might have 
been expected from the scholarly critics. They 
should have seen that the trend of his nature 
compelled him to say much that was as un- 
welcome to him as to them. For, despite his 
birth and training, he was constitutionally in- 
capable of great faith; indeed, life would have 
been easier for him had such not been the case. 
He showed this in the pain his doubts created, 
and in the sympathy he had with things he 
could not accept. But he refused to forsake 
the path over which there shone "the high 
white star of truth." Right or wrong, he would 
not play false with reason and loyalty as he 

1 The Poetical Works of Arnold, To Marguerite, p. 198. 

2 Rid., Dover Beach (1895), p. 296. 

[2251 



Matthew Arnold 

understood them. If the critics gave him little 
heed, the reading pubhc gave him less. Some 
of his best work was contained in his first 
two volumes, and these were withdrawn from 
circulation. The explanation for such neglect 
is found, in part, in the decadent state of English 
criticism from 1825 to 1860. This decadence 
had much to do mth his later essays in the 
realm of criticism. Others quite as gifted ex- 
perienced a measure of the same ignorance and 
misunderstanding. Tennyson was slowly and 
reluctantly accepted ; Browning for a long time 
was refused a hearing ; Carlyle could make no 
terms with the older stylists and so he defied 
them all; Ruskin offended the young arbiters 
of prose ; George Borrow's Lavengro went a-beg- 
ging; and FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam was 
ignored. 

Professor Saintsbury considers Arnold's first 
volume, though unequal, a wonderful produc- 
tion for a man still under thirty. Such lines 
as these from Mycerinus — 

"And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all. 
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall"; 

and the less-quoted ones in the concluding 
portion of the poem — 

"WTiile the deep-burnish'd foliage overhead 
Sphnter'd the silver arrows of the moon," — 

detain us by their authority. The sonnet on 

Shakespeare was a bold attempt which nearly 

[226] 



Matthew Arnold 

succeeded. The second volume contained two 
larger and more ambitious poems and thirty- 
three smaller ones, of which two were never 
reprinted. It was again a varied achievement, 
and the author withdrew it shortly after pub- 
lication. The memorial verses on Wordsworth 
were sufficient in themselves to give dis- 
tinction to the book, and in Summer Night 
Arnold won a triumph over himself. His 
vague agnosticism was swept away by a wave 
of genuine feeling. Here "the lips are touched 
at last; the eyes thoroughly opened to see 
what the lips shall speak; the brain almost 
unconsciously frames and fills the adequate 
and consistent scheme — the false rhymes are 
nowhere; the imperfect phrases, the little sham 
simplicities or pedantries, hide themselves, and 
the poet is free, from the splendid opening 
landscape, through the meditative exposition 
and the fine picture of the shipwreck, to the 
magnificent final invocation of the 'clearness 
divine.'"! 

Space forbids any extended mention of 
Sohrab and Rustum, based on the old theme of 
a father and son who never knew each other 
until it was too late, and whose struggles ended 
in the father's enlightenment and consequent 
despair, and the son's acquiescence in his 
father's will. The Requiescat, notable for its 
simplicity and pathos, must be passed over; 

* See Saintsbury's Matthew Arnold, p. 27. 
[ 227 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

but let me emphasize in a word the gem of 
Arnold's poems, The Scholar Gypsy, with its 
Oxonian setting and its stately swing and sway 
of stanza, mounting to the culminating lines: 

"Still nursing the unconquerable hope. 
Still clutching the inviolable shade." 

On May 5, 1857, Arnold was elected by Con- 
vocation to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford. 
He was the first layman who had occupied it, 
and the election showed that his works had 
at last secured the sympathy and support of 
a conservative yet enlightened group of scholars 
and literary people. The professorship meant 
much for him, and more for the English litera- 
ture of his time. The death of Wordsworth, 
Macaulay, and Leigh Hunt ended the tradi- 
tions of the eighteenth century and the first 
half of the nineteenth. True, Walter Savage 
Landor was still living ; but he had always 
dwelt alone. The later men — Carlyle, Thack- 
eray, Dickens, FitzGerald, Mill, Tennyson, 
Browning — were now well to the front, and 
Arnold was among these contemporaries as 
the poet of the mind. His work is clear-cut, 
finely finished, like specimens of classical sculp- 
ture, and like them in its polish and marble 
coldness. The larger and more fascinating 
themes of love and passion seem beyond him, 
and his dramatic poems are too reflective, too 
restrained; they lack the vividness and move- 
ment which characterize the highest work of 
[ 228 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

this order. Although many of his passages 
are models of clearness and of concentration, 
they rarely rise to the highest levels. But 
with the minor strain of the elegy he is more 
at home, and ever and anon a throb of emo- 
tion, a sense of tears, is perceptible. His gentle 
yet firm strategy of thought and speech wages 
war on carelessness and frivolity. The courage 
which always distinguishes him is eminent in 
his verse. He never turns aside when evil is to 
be rebuked. And those who follow him will 
be conscious that "he is disengaged from the 
weak and the temporary, a source of strength, 
if not of joy." 

m 

Arnold loved England, and earnestly desired 
her betterment. His tenure of the Chair of 
Poetry at Oxford quickened this desire, and 
he knew no better service to render her than to 
repair the defects in her intellectual and literary 
history, which were due, as he conceived it, to 
the lack of a regulative and well-ordered critical 
function. His own poetry had been received, 
it so far as it was received at all, in such a 
haphazard manner, and with such an absence 
of true and balanced judgment, that he deter- 
mined to differentiate between criticism which 
was personal and sentimental and that which 
was canonical and scientific. This determina- 
tion was not a hasty one; it had been hinted as 
[229] 



Matthew Arnold 

early as 1853, when he called attention, in the 
preface of his Poems, to the superiority of Con- 
tinental criticism as compared with that of 
England. On the Continent, and especially in 
France, writers were guided by ascertained 
precedents and sustained by carefully devised 
rules, which did not permit individual tastes 
to run riot or idiosyncrasies to unduly prevail. 
Recognized standards of excellence, in both 
poetry and prose, were established and con- 
served by such organizations as the French 
Academy; and Arnold coveted a similar lit- 
erary Senatus which should govern and direct 
the higher forms of English literature. The 
scheme was an exalted one: but he seems to 
have forgotten that each nation produces after 
its kind; or if he remembered it, he was so 
much of a pedagogue, that, to quote his own 
remark about the Americans, "Few stocks could 
be trusted to grow up properly without having 
a priesthood and an aristocracy to act as their 
schoolmasters at some time or other of their 
natural existence." That he exaggerated the 
value of German and French letters at the ex- 
pense of those of England is beyond doubt. 
He regrets that "not very much of current 
English literature comes into the 'best that is 
known and thought in the world ' — certainly 
less than that of France or Germany." ^ When 
it is recalled that the Germans have possessed 

^ See Essays in Criticism, Second Series, p. 38. 
[ 230 1 



Matthew Arnold 

only two major poets in five hundred years, and 
that when Arnold made his observation in 1865 
the great French writers were rapidly disappear- 
ing, while for one hundred years around this 
date England and America could rejoice in at 
least a score of poets and prose writers of the 
first order, the reader can make such modifi- 
cations of this verdict as he thinks proper. 
Arnold accompanied it with the strange state- 
ment that in the England of the first quarter of 
the nineteenth century there was "no natural 
glow of life." During this very period the 
Waverley Novels were written, the battles of 
Trafalgar and Waterloo were fought, the Napo- 
leonic Empire was destroyed, and Britain's 
hold on India firmly established. These are 
somewhat lively escapades for a sluggish and 
decadent people. 

The susceptibilities of Arnold need not engage 
us too long, since one is never able to satisfy 
himself whether they are deliberate inventions 
or sincere and pathetically wrong judgments. 
There can be no doubt that in the main issue 
of his manifesto, as indeed of all his writings, 
he was correct concerning England's deficiencies 
in criticism. Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, 
Pope, Dr. Johnson, and the Edinburgh Re- 
viewers were examples of great critical talent, 
which was isolated, and without any succes- 
sion, too frequently swayed by passion and 
partisanship rather than by reason and the 
[231] 



Matthew Arnold 

knowledge of the best. Coleridge in philo- 
sophical, Hazlitt in literary, and Lamb in 
sympathetic criticism were accomplished and 
interesting authorities; but in the chaotic state 
then existing, they could do little more than 
follow their own judgment. Deprived of any 
consensus of the best opinion, they were 
unable to correct the melancholy narrowness 
and frequent delinquencies of the art. They 
left no heirs, and their results were not inves- 
tigated, supplemented, or coordinated until 
Arnold instituted the science of English literary 
criticism. This was one of the most important 
achievements of his life, and upon it rests his 
serious claim to be among those who have 
advanced learning. He defined criticism as 
the endeavor, in all branches of knowledge, 
theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to 
see the object as it really is.^ This obviously 
means much more than literary criticism; but 
literary criticism was the indispensable part 
of the whole movement. He set down the 
definition with the conviction already named 
here, that Romanticism had been allowed too 
wide a margin, and that "a new classicism of 
lucidity, proportion, and restraint" was needed 
to complement and correct the authors and 
critics of the Revolutionary period. These 
had received an undue stimulation from the 
exciting events of those stirring days, and as 

^ Essays in Criticism, First Series, p. 1. 
[ 232 1 



Matthew Arnold 

a result imagination usurped the place of reason. 
Its discolorations stained the purity of true 
literature. Arnold scorned a return to the 
impeccable style of the school of Pope, "whose 
poetry," he remarked, "was conceived and 
composed in the wits, whereas genuine poetry 
is conceived and composed in the soul." He 
proposed to direct attention to the example of 
those immortals who are enshrined in classic 
lore. His aim was similar to that of Ruskin 
in the realm of art: an aim fearlessly planned 
and well wrought, though not without short- 
comings. 

Nothing was more deeply rooted in Arnold 
than the intense practicality of his literary 
genius. In this he was more American than 
English, and more French than either. For 
if, as Voltaire said, the moral vigor of its ideas 
has been the strength and glory of English 
poetry, it is also the distinction of French 
poetry that it not only richly conceived but 
radically applied its conceptions. It was this 
formal and immediate application that swayed 
Arnold's mind in the constructive part of his 
critical work. He held that extraneous interests 
and views must be completely eliminated. 
Waywardness, provinciality, and caprice are 
the pitfalls the true guide will carefully avoid ; 
they are the besetting faults which have so 
often hindered correct judgments. The govern- 
ing word which expresses the lawful disposition 
[233] 



Matthew Arnold 

of a true critic is disinterestedness. By means 
of this the mind can approach any question 
with one side or the other, and with more 
sides, if more there be. It will not cry, nor 
strive, nor persist in pressing forward with 
partisan violence and self-will to exalt any 
single aspect at the expense of others. This 
important requisite must be secured; "for by its 
aid alone can mortals hope to gain any vision of 
the mysterious goddess whom we shall never see 
except in outline." Even the outline will not 
be seen unless this condition of mind is ours. 
Goethe was the great liberator of German 
thought, because he had disinterestedness, and 
his profound, imperturbable naturalism was 
diametrically opposed to routine thinking. Cer- 
tainly we cannot obtain it from the Mystics 
any more than from the Romanticists; for they 
are too near akin, too clouded over with the 
mists of fancifulness, too much swayed by gusts 
of ill-regulated sentiment, to be of any real ser- 
vice. According to Arnold, neither can make 
any practical use of ideas for the modern 
world. 

He gives three rules for the attainment of 
disinterestedness. The first is by keeping aloof 
from practice, such a detachment being neces- 
sary, since the natural leaning of an author 
to his own style injures the acuteness and 
comprehensiveness of his critical faculty. The 
second is like the first in that it is negative 
[ 234 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

and somewhat vague: by the relinquishing of 
predilection of whatever kind or description. 
Tlie main function of criticism is to understand 
and indicate the best that is known and thought 
in the world, without regard to party affihation, 
rehgious beHef, adherence to creed, promptings 
of patriotism, or bias of temperament. The 
one positive rule follows : by a free play of the 
mind, which, delivered from distractions, can 
act upon the matters before it with accuracy 
and justice. We are to avoid bewildering 
those who come after us, to transmit to them 
the practice of poetry and of prose with its 
boundaries and wholesome regulative laws, 
under which excellent work may again at 
some future time be produced. 

Here Arnold shows his distinguishing merit 
as a critic. He had a theory, and by means 
of it he regarded his subject as a whole. His 
opinions were more than opinions; they were 
the studied judgments of a trained intelligence 
working upon a systematic order of ideas; and 
his purpose was to perpetuate the classic style, 
to find which a man need not forsake the 
English tongue. Those who would gain any 
sense of its power and charm are urged to read 
the poetry of the matchless singer of Puritan- 
ism. Milton is the great magistrate of letters 
whose work is the faithful continuation of the 
ancients. "All the Anglo-Saxon contagion, all 
the flood of Anglo-Saxon commonness, beats 
[ 235 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

vainly against this great style, but cannot 
shake it, and has to accept its triumphs. It 
triumphs in Milton, in one of our own race, 
tongue, faith, morals. It is no longer an exotic 
here; it is an inmate among us, a leaven, a 
power. In our race are thousands of readers, 
presently there will be millions, who know not 
a word of Greek or Latin, and will never learn 
those languages." ^ They need not trouble 
about translations so long as they read the 
poetry of Milton. The world will eventually 
be conquered by the ideals of excellence which 
he has forever placed within the compass of 
our speech. 

Such teaching reveals Arnold at his best, as 
one of the few men who are equally important 
in prose, poetry, and criticism. His desire for 
the perfection of culture, and the rules that 
govern its acquirement, found their completest 
utterance in his volume Essays in Criticism. 
It is also his most important prose work, an 
epoch-making book, "the first full, varied, and 
best expression of the author's critical attitude, 
and the detailed exemplar of the critical method 
he inaugurated and applied." It is a necessity, 
not only for those of congenial temperament, 
but for all lovers of literature, and its reading 
is an event in any intelligent person's intel- 
lectual life. Notwithstanding this, its reception 

^ See Address on John Milton, St. Margaret's Church,. West- 
minster, February 13th, 1888. 

[2361 



M atthew Arnold 

corroborated Arnold's belief concerning the im- 
pregnable indifference of the English people. 
It appeared in 1865, and a second edition was 
not required until 1869, when the famous preface 
was shorn of some ephemeral allusions. Nearly 
twenty years elapsed before the sale of the 
fourth edition was completed. Yet this is the 
book which contains the exquisite address to 
Oxford, already given, the essays on Heine, on 
the two De Guerins, and on themes as widely 
different as Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Senti- 
ment and The Function of Criticism at the Pres- 
ent Time. In the contrast of paganism with 
medisevalism Arnold places side by side with 
the Hymn to Adonis by Theocritus the Canticle 
of St. Francis, and makes the following com- 
ments upon them: "The poetry of Theocritus's 
hymn is poetry treating the world according 
to the demand of the senses; the poetry of St. 
Francis's hymn is poetry treating the world 
according to the demand of the heart and 
imagination. The first takes the world by its 
outward, sensible side; the second, by its in- 
ward, symbolical side. The first admits as much 
of the world as is pleasure-giving; the second 
admits the whole world, rough and smooth, 
painful and pleasure-giving, all alike, but all 
transfigured by the power of a spiritual emotion, 
all brought under a law of supersensual love, 
having its seat in the soul." ^ Such exposition 

^ Essays in Criticism, First Series (London 1902), p. 203. 
[237] 



Matthew Arnold 

as this, while it did not impress the public, 
delighted competent judges, who, though aware 
that Arnold was sometimes away from the 
center, were equally aware that there had been 
nothing like it since Hazlitt. In Arnold's 
apparently languid and reiterative rhetoric 
there is a sinuous strength and attractiveness 
which will outlast the vigorous style of more 
popular authors. It is a protest against char- 
latanism and vulgarity, and a plea for purity 
and naturalism in our literary standards. With- 
out any appetite for moralizing, one might 
suggest that many a young clergyman and 
public speaker will save his soul alive, so far as 
effective utterance is concerned, by making 
himself thoroughly familiar with the better side 
of Arnold. The tendencies to tautology, ver- 
bosity, unrestrained allusion, artificiality, trite 
quotation, and excessive symbolism are the 
bane for which Arnold's thoroughly informed 
and penetrating criticism is the antidote. 



[238] 



SEVENTH LECTURE 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 



Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! 

Clearness divine! 

Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign 

Of languor, though so calm and though so great. 

Are yet untroubled and unpassionate ! 

Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil, 

And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil! 

I will not say that your mild deeps retain 

A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain 

Who have longed deeply once, and long'd in vain; 

But I will rather say that you remain 

A world above man's head, to let him see 

How boundless might his souVs horizons be. 

How vast, yet of what clear transparency! 

How it were good to live there, and breathe free! 

How fair a lot to fill 

Is left to each man still! 

Arnold. — A Summer Night. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 
PART n 



Arnold had a wide and congenial acquaint- 
ance which enriched his private Hfe; but his 
mannerisms were unfortunate, and frequently 
hid the fact that he was human on every side 
of his nature. They hardened as he grew 
older, and "a slightly exotic vocabulary" made 
its appearance in his later work. So it came 
to pass that this man — who was the idol of 
his intimates, who ardently loved life, and 
who believed he had a mission to preach his 
gospel to his countrymen — was misunderstood, 
neglected, and condemned so far as the general 
public was concerned. He had virtually laid 
aside poetry when he wrote A French Eton, 
which was published a year before the Essays. 
In this volume certain assumptions, which after- 
ward became familiar, made their first appear- 
ance, and they grew bolder the more he aired 
them in successive books. Not content with 
being a literary critic, he was disposed to 
extend his function to political, sociological, 
and ecclesiastical affairs. He displayed a 
marked animus toward theology and cler- 
[2411 



Matthew Arnold 

icalism. The aristocracy was charged with 
being insensible to ideas ; the AngHcan Church 
had made a miserable failure ; the middle 
class had no taste, no real knowledge of ethics, 
philosophy, or politics ; and England's only 
hope lay in imitating France, whose enthu- 
siastic and practical application of ideas to 
every phase of human life kindled his admira- 
tion. Professor Saintsbury characterizes his 
attitude as "a combination of Socrates and 
Lord Chesterfield," highly diverting to some, 
corrective of others, and not without disaster 
for himself. Arnold had a slight knowledge 
of his countrymen, and for this reason he was 
never tired of reproaching them. Although 
he does not openly express the class distinc- 
tion he afterward made, the English people 
are already sharply separated in his mind as 
Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace. 

Except perhaps in the case of Browning, his 
references to his contemporaries lacked appre- 
ciation, to say nothing of cordiality. Lord 
Coleridge said that they shriveled in his 
presence. Charlotte Bronte's Villette is dis- 
agreeable because the writer's mind contains 
nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage. No 
fine writing can hide this thoroughly, and it 
will be fatal to her in the long run. Bulwer 
Lytton's nature likewise is by no means a per- 
fect one, and this makes itself felt in his book. 
Ruskin is more fortunate, inasmuch as he 
[2421 



Matthew Arnold 

meets with a scanty approval. Bishop Wilber- 
force is portrayed as of no real power of 
mind, a society-hunting and man-pleasing 
ecclesiastic. Of Tennyson he remarks, "My 
interest in him is slight, and my conviction that 
he will not finally stand high is firm." After 
Thackeray's death he wrote, "I cannot say 
that I like him thoroughly, though we were on 
friendly terms, and he was not to my mind a 
great writer." To Keats he gave a belated 
recognition, and he saw the defects of Cole- 
ridge more conspicuously than his excellences. 
Elizabethan literature was full of spirit and 
power, but "steeped in humors and whimsi- 
calities to its very lips." Even Shakespeare 
did not escape. Arnold censured him for a 
tortuous and faulty style in many passages, 
and termed his diction fantastic and false. 
Lincoln's utterances lacked distinction. And 
the whole outlook and manner of Macaulay 
was derided. This is not sweet reasonable- 
ness; nor is it envy or jealousy. Arnold was 
not always given to the former, but he was 
absolutely above the latter. He kept his 
unqualified sympathy and approval for a se- 
lected few, chiefly Wordsworth and some Con- 
tinentals, of whom Sainte-Beuve was the 
most prominent. His excessive devotion to 
this remnant introduced into his criticism of 
others the personal equation he was always 
deploring; and while he was conscientious, 
[2431 



Matthew Arnold 

and desired to be just, he was often muddled 
in his estimates. 

This is seen in the controversial manner he 
adopted toward the Puritan element of English- 
speaking society. He wrote from the stand- 
point of an Erastian, who frankly believed in 
a State Church if it could be modeled on his 
own lines of comprehensiveness. He had no 
love for that type of church life which, until 
the last decades of the nineteenth century, 
remained almost untouched by the progress of 
thought. And at bottom he did have a gen- 
uine estimate for Puritanism, albeit accom- 
panied by a knowledge of its shortcomings, 
and an earnest hope that he might be able to 
remedy them. In one of his American ad- 
dresses he spoke of the Puritan training which 
we have undergone here, and remarked that, 
as " a means for enabling that poor, inattentive, 
and immoral creature, man, to love and appro- 
priate and make part of his being, divine ideas, 
on which he could not otherwise have laid or 
kept hold, the discipline of Puritanism has been 
invaluable; and," he continues, "the more I 
read history, the more I see of mankind, the 
more I recognize its value." 

True, it was given to Puritanism to fix and 
intensify in England and America a standard of 
conduct ; and even its narrowness was the 
result of moral concentration attended by high 
seriousness and the governing sense of the 
[244] 



Matthew Arnold 

presence of God. The objection Arnold made 
was that, in spite of its undeniable excel- 
lences, it afforded no place for the demands 
of intellect, knowledge, beauty, and manners ; 
and that, after it had enjoyed a season of 
prosperity, it retired within itself, where its 
imperfections solidified and became less capable 
of correction. The Puritan had overvalued the 
doctrine of self-restraint and dwelt too exclu- 
sively on strictness of conscience. Arnold saw 
that a reaction was inevitable, and he feared it 
might eventually bring a resuscitation of the 
pagan spirit, and end in the sordidness of mere 
pleasure-seeking, or even absolute degradation. 
He aimed to effect a reconciliation by the 
union of those two tendencies, the names of 
which are well known to his readers — Hel- 
lenism and Hebraism. These are not antin- 
omies, mutually exclusive of each other, but 
component parts of the scheme for human 
development. In that development Hellenism 
and Hebraism are indispensable contributions. 
But the end is not in them ; it is in the growth 
of the man himself, and to this end Arnold 
would have them reign side by side in friendly 
empire over the human mind. He is willing to 
admit that Puritanism was perhaps necessary 
to strengthen the moral fiber of the English 
race, to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domina- 
tion over men's minds and thus prepare the 
way for freedom. Still, culture points out that 
[2451 



Matthew Arnold 

the harmonized perfection of generations of 
Puritans has been in consequence sacrificed. 
It is now time for us to Hellenize and to praise 
knowing, for we have Hebraized too much and 
have overvalued doing. Culture for him was a 
harmonious expansion of all the powers which 
make the beauty and the worth of human 
nature, and it was not consistent with the 
overdevelopment of any one power at the 
expense of the rest. Here, he adds, culture 
goes beyond religion as generally conceived 
by us. Literature must be at the top, the 
knowledge of the best that has been spoken 
in history, philosophy, and poetry. "While 
Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital 
intimations of the universal order, and rivets 
itself upon them with unequalled grandeur and 
intensity, the bent of Hellenism is to follow 
with flexible activity the whole play of the 
universal order, to be apprehensive of missing 
any part of it, of sacrificing one part to another." 
The Greeks may have failed to give adequate 
attention to the claims of man's moral side, 
but they arrived at a more comprehensive 
adjustment of the claims of both sides in men, 
the intellectual as well as the moral, and they 
made a reconciliation of both which is of the 
utmost service to the modern world. Dr. W. L. 
Watkinson comments with pungency on this 
arraignment of the moral order. In his lecture 
on The Influence of Skepticism on Character the 
[246] 



Matthew Arnold 

distinguished preacher impeaches Arnold for 
his flouting of the Puritan sympathy with the 
righteousness of the Bible and the Puritan 
preference for goodness rather than beauty and 
taste. According to the ethics of the Scriptures, 
"Righteousness is the essential, supreme, final 
law of development for the individual, the 
nation, the race ; wealth, arms, art, literature, 
trade, government, and what else, being left 
to take their chance, which they are then best 
able to do, under the ordering of the natural 
action of the sovereign law of righteousness." ^ 
The placing of anything on an equality with 
character, the exaltation of any form of intel- 
lectual pursuit above moral principle and 
obligation, is obnoxious to the conscience of 
a people trained in the precepts of the Holy 
Scriptures. Such is Dr. Watkinson's rebuff to 
the propagandism against that section of English 
life of which Arnold himself said that with all 
its faults it was still the best stuff in the 
nation. The reviving taste for the drama, and 
the increasing appreciation for letters and the 
arts, were indications to Arnold of England's 
ultimate salvation. He, however, seriously in- 
jured his influence because he would indulge 
too freely his dangerous gift for gibes and 
sneers. The leaders of contemporary Puritan- 
ism were incensed by his polite and studied 
abuse. He met their fulminations with a pas- 

^ Watkinson's Influence of Skepticism on Character, pp. 34-37. 
[247] 



Matthew Arnold 

sive resistance which was more effective than a 
vigorous onslaught. But his vision of a recon- 
structed England and America, in which the 
graces of Hellenism would give equipoise and 
completeness to the Puritan character, was un- 
realized by him, and his first approaches ended 
in failure. 

As distinguished from the Puritanism of 
America, that of England offered a promising 
field for his evangel of culture. For there 
Free Churchmen had been practically excluded 
from the Universities, and yet they had been 
compelled to bear their full share of the 
burden of making, moralizing, and liberalizing 
the empire. Like their American brethren, 
they had shared with the Hebrew in the sense 
of holiness and with the Roman in the sense 
of law and politics. There is no reason to 
doubt that, with an equal opportunity, they 
could also have shared, long before they did, 
in those graces which are the finished pro- 
duct of the natural faculties. Where Arnold 
did not succeed, others have done so, and 
the precisian conscience of sectarianism, with 
its "unlovely leanness of moral judgment," 
has now been ameliorated from more humane 
sources. The gloomy and perverse asceticism 
of which he justly complained is passing away, 
while the beauty and harmony which are every- 
where the reflection of God have come to their 
own among the sons and daughters of the 
[248] 



Matthew Arnold 

Cromwellians and the Pilgrims. What course 
Puritanism on both sides of the Atlantic would 
have followed, had it not been interrupted 
and occupied by its stern defense of liberty, 
it is perhaps idle to speculate. Milton — a 
far more complete soul than Arnold, one in- 
deed to whom he himself pointed as the soli- 
tary representative in the modern period of the 
authoritative traditions of the past — has ex- 
pressed the earlier ideals of Puritanism when 
undisturbed by war and persecution. In the 
sad, sweet strains of II Penseroso and the 
joyous music of L' Allegro there is a stateli- 
ness and a delight which were lost when the 
poet doffed his singing robes that he might 
impeach the tyrants of the State. We have 
gloried so much in our fathers' victories and in 
the results which followed them that perhaps 
we have forgotten what losses were incurred 
by the thwarting of these earlier ideals. At 
any rate, we can console ourselves with the 
suggestion that, had not our ancestors thus 
contended and won, Arnold would hardly have 
been permitted to print what he did. They 
nursed the pinion which impelled his steel; 
for if Archbishop Laud could have laid hands 
on the outspoken critic of creeds and of the 
Episcopacy, a charming literary career might 
have come to grief. 

The term "Philistine," of which Arnold makes 
such a liberal use, is first found in his essays 
[2491 



Matthew Arnold 

on Heine. He borrowed it from the German, 
and he appHed it to the self-complacent and 
conventional respectability of the English 
nation. There Goliath of Gath pitched his 
tent, there was the god Dagon, and there were 
the hosts of the uncircumcised. These ani- 
madversions were prompted by the prevalent 
disinclination to culture which existed in the 
chosen island. He sat closer to the conscience 
of intellectual reform than his fellow-citizens, 
and he incessantly attacked them for their 
conceit, fatuousness, and stupidity. He op- 
posed their ignorant assumptions, their false 
standards, and their vitiated tastes. As a 
child of the ideal he had no possible relation 
with those self-appointed guardians of the 
truth who had ceased to be able to recognize 
truth when they saw it. Carlyle anticipated 
Arnold in his detestation of Philistinism, to 
which he referred as "respectability in a thou- 
sand gigs." The term respectable was too 
polite and sedate for Arnold's use in this con- 
nection. His analysis was more thorough and 
more caustic; he confuted the accepted guides 
of public opinion with rough and unsparing 
words interspersed with soft, silky, insinuating 
refinements and quips more irritating than 
merely irascible comments. These corrupted 
powers ruled every sphere; the worlds of art, 
literature, and politics were their property. 
They exercised dictatorship over morals and 
[250] 



Matthew Arnold 

theology; their verdicts, though based on no 
well-founded tenets, were beyond appeal. 
For him they were blind leaders of the blind, 
provincials encased in obsolete dogmas; and he 
treated them with supercilious blandness and 
ironical scorn. He tells the Guardian that it is 
dull. Presbyter Anglicanus that he is born of 
Hyrcanian tigers, and the editor of the Satur- 
day Review that he is a late and embarrassed 
convert to the Philistines. When Mr. Wright 
complained of Arnold's strictures upon his 
translation of the Iliad, he replied that the 
matter had left his memory. But he was 
willing to withdraw the offending phrase, and 
expressed his sorrow for having used it. He 
says: "Mr. Wright, however, would perhaps be 
more indulgent to my vivacity, if he considered 
that we are none of us likely to be lively much 
longer. My vivacity is but the last sparkle of 
flame before we are all in the dark, the last 
glimpse of color before we all go into drab, — 
the drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, aus- 
terely literal future. Yes, the world will soon 
be the Philistines'! and then, with every voice, 
not of thunder, silenced, and the whole earth 
filled and ennobled every morning by the mag- 
nificent roaring of the young lions of the Daily 
Telegraph, we shall all yawn in one another's 
faces with the dismallest, the most unimpeach- 
able gravity." ^ The modesty of Arnold's reck- 

^ Essays in Criticism, First Series, p. 6. 
[2511 



Matthew Arnold 

oning on the illuminating qualities of his own 
vivacity will doubtless appear unto many ; 
however that may be, he would persist in 
prophesying, the most gratuitous of all forms 
of error. 

Yet much can be forgiven a man who says 
concerning culture, "It seeks to do away with 
classes and sects; to make the best that has 
been thought and known in the world current 
everywhere; to make all men live in an atmos- 
phere of sweetness and light, where they may 
use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely nourished 
and not bound by them. This is the social 
idea ; and the men of culture are the true 
apostles of humanity." Arnold is here in one 
of his happiest humors, and the more credit is 
due to him when we remember the dull routine 
he was called upon to endure. "Here," he com- 
plains, "is my programme for this afternoon: 
Avalanches — The Steam-engine — The Thames 
— India-rubber — Bricks — The Battle of Poi- 
tiers — Subtraction — The Reindeer — The Gun- 
powder Plot — The Jordan. Alluring, is it 
not? Twenty minutes each, and the days of 
one's life are only threescore years and ten." 
This kind of thing lasted for thirty-five years, 
during which he displayed the virtue already 
mentioned, and which is found in both his 
poetry and his criticism, a dauntless courage 
— courage in his crusade against British indiffer- 
rence and provincialism, courage in his bold 
[252] 



Matthew Arnold 

challenge of the false gods of democracy, courage 
in his indictment of men in high place who 
sought to cover their intellectual destitution 
with sounding and superfluous phrases. Had 
Arnold's wisdom always been equal to his 
courage, he would have entered more abun- 
dantly than he did into the results of his labor. 
It is easy enough to detect him in the breach 
of his own rules, and to chide him for turning 
aside to indulge in disproportionate praise and 
blame. Yet we are not to forget that he 
created a new era in criticism, and gave a new 
interest to aesthetic forms of culture. 

II 

In politics Arnold was a sort of hesitant 
Liberal, without the habit of allegiance to 
party leaders, and with some marked peculiari- 
ties of his own.^ He was hospitably inclined 
toward many new theories; but as these were 
more often wrong than right, his entertain- 
ment of them was looked upon as a harmless 
diversion. Besides, a man who persisted in 
judging for himself, who took nothing at sec- 
ond hand, who bowed the knee to no reputa- 
tion, however high its pedestal in the temple 
of fame, was not likely to be a successful 
politician. He pitied the sorrows of the people 
who suffer, the dim common populations "who 
faint away"; but he pitied them from above, 

^ Introduction to Culture and Anarchy. 
[ 253 ] 



Matthew Arnold 

and the idea that the fountains of authority 
were in these masses never occurred to him. He 
had honorable and true convictions on certain 
vexed issues of the day, issues which are still 
in process of adjustment and have no imme- 
diate prospect of settlement. He held that 
there must be a levelling in the immense in- 
equalities of material condition and property 
which exist in England, and which he thought 
were due to the feudal system of land tenure. 
Municipal life should also be cleansed, and its 
ignorance and pauperism, crime and vice, 
exterminated. Secondary education ought to 
be extended on a scale commensurate with 
natural necessities, and made accessible to the 
democracy. This admirable scheme is an ex- 
tensive programme for the poet in politics, and 
seems almost more like Mill than Arnold. 
But his usual perverse fate accompanied it, 
and probably he was better known and less 
loved for his personal dislike of Gladstone or 
his opposition to Home Rule than for his 
ardent support of such enlightened and neces- 
sary measures as land reform and higher edu- 
cation. He astonished his friends and delighted 
his foes by opposing the Burials Bill, which 
gave Free Churchmen the right to use their 
own ministry and forms of service. He gravely 
argued that this would substitute less suitable 
and dignified liturgies, and that such a substi- 
tution would be equivalent to displacing a poem 
f 254 1 



Matthew Arnold 

of Milton for some verses by Eliza Cook. Yet 
despite these unhappy misdirections, he won- 
dered why the Free Churchmen did not hail 
him as their deliverer. To the last he vehe- 
mently denounced the disestablishment of the 
Episcopal Church in Ireland, and he would 
have been willing to see the Methodist, Roman 
Catholic, and Presbyterian Churches made par- 
takers in State pay and patronage rather than 
have the measure enacted. His scheme of 
ultimate union included the incorporation of 
Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Puri- 
tanism, although he realized that this was a 
far-off event to be preceded by the amalgama- 
tion of Protestants. It is probable that Arnold 
sympathized with the Roman Catholic Church 
rather than. with the Church of his birth or 
with Nonconformity. The eflBcient organiza- 
tion of the older communion appealed to his 
high views on the question, and he made the 
prediction that Romanism would be the pre- 
vailing form for the Christianity of the future. 
He was alive to its credulities, intolerance, and 
dislike of criticism; but these were traits which 
it shared with human nature at large, and the 
differences between it and Protestantism were 
quantitive rather than qualitative. It appeals 
to the imagination in a way that Protestantism 
can not and does not. It has the commenda- 
tion of antiquity, and accessories which give it 
nobleness and amplitude. Its knowledge of 
[^55] 



M atthew Arnold 

human nature is deep and subtle, its stores of 
human experience abound in wisdom and state- 
craft. If Romanism were only awake to its 
perennial power of attraction, it would speed- 
ily increase its already large constituencies. 
But it must be "a Romanism purged, opening 
itself to the light and air, ha\'ing the conscious- 
ness of its own poetry, freed from its sacerdotal 
despotism, and also from its pseudo-scientific 
apparatus of superannuated dogma." Such is 
the type of CathoKcism to which Arnold would 
commit the welfare of the Church at large. 
And he regrets that the advocates of the 
CathoHc creeds and of the ultramontane 
system should vainly claim for them that 
which is alone true of Catholic worship. This 
is a purely religious function, it is eternal 
and universal, and, if freed from the theolo- 
gical and political elements which embarrass 
it, would reassert itseK with august author- 
ity. But he concludes that "to rule over 
the moment and the credulous has more 
attraction than to work for the future and 
the sane." ^ 

In his official intercourse with Noncon- 
formist school-managers, Arnold gained that 
curiously intimate knowledge of the various 
denominations which furnished the material 
for his discussion of their history, doctrines* 
and influence upon one another and upon the 

^ Essay on Eugenie de Guerin. 
[256] 



Matthew Arnold 

nation. Notwithstanding his apparently un- 
avoidable sarcasm, he treated many of their 
issues in a broad and illuminating way; and it 
is a misfortune that it is not Arnold's views 
which have become current coin, so much as 
certain capricious literary phrases and twists of 
speech. Men who speak of his contempt for 
the "dissidence of dissent" and the "Protes- 
tantism of the Protestant religion" have yet to 
learn that he always wrote with the aim of 
reconciliation, and with the firm belief that 
Nonconformity was doomed unless it could 
save itself by a return to the Establishment, 
which must be purified and broadened to 
receive it. 

His religious views reflect the turbulent 
period of transition in which he lived. It was 
no longer possible for him to take refuge in 
the quietism of Wordsworth or in the German 
metaphysics of Coleridge. Scientific progress 
had caused the disquisitions of these men to 
appear as far removed from Arnold's day 
as were the speculations of the Schoolmen. 
Further, he had not the necessary learning to 
be a theological leader, and it was his lack of 
this which led him to some fantastic conclu- 
sions and also incurred the opposition of con- 
temporary orthodoxy. Yet his spirituality of 
outlook and ethical purpose were unmistakable, 
and he knew that, remarkable as were the reve- 
lations of organized knowledge, they would 
[257] 



Matthew Arnold 

eventually fail to satisfy the yearnings of man's 
higher nature. His essays on theological and 
polemical subjects were published at an oppor- 
tune moment when the matters he discussed 
were well to the front. They will continue to 
be read as models of English prose; but it is 
more than doubtful if they will exercise any 
formative influence. So far as biblical criti- 
cism and the philosophy of religion were 
concerned, he initiated nothing, but simply 
emphasized and gave a popular setting to 
certain phases of German scholarship. He 
reveals the spirit though not the temper of the 
Tubingen school. His treatment of these and 
kindred questions is found chiefly in Culture 
and Anarchy: an Essay in Political and Social 
Criticism (1869); St. Paul and Protestantism: 
with an Introduction on Puritanism and the 
Church of England (1870); Literature and 
Dogma: an Essay toward a Better Apprehension 
of the Bible (1872); Last Essays on Church and 
Religion (1877); and Discourses in America 
(1885). 

It should be added that Arnold laid no 
claim to theological knowledge; indeed, so far 
as dogma was concerned, he was proud of his 
detachment from it. He believed that the 
world had had enough of it, and his purpose 
was to examine its stock notions and current 
phrases and pour into them a fresh stream 
of ideas. Mr. William H. Dawson argues that, 
[2581 



Matthew Arnold 

as a layman, Arnold was the better able to 
do this with an open mind; for he had no thesis 
to establish and no preconceptions to confirm — 
in a word, nothing to prove. It was there- 
fore easier for him to grasp large spiritual 
truths and interpret them in a generous 
temper. He was freed from exclusiveness and 
provinciality, and the whole range of human 
experience in religion was open to his inquiry. 
In brief, disinterestedness, Arnold's first 
canon of criticism, was applied to the study of 
these questions. Its presence in poets and 
philosophers has made them rather than 
theologians the prophets of God to the modern 
generation. And the milder and more sym- 
pathetic attitude of Christians toward one 
another and toward non-Christian religions is 
largely owing to the simple candor with which 
claims to a monopoly of revelation and grace 
have been brushed aside by such teachers as 
Carlyle and Browning. 

Arnold defines God in various ways. He 
refers to the Supreme Being, in his original 
preface to Literature and Dogma, as a great 
personal first Cause, the moral and intelligent 
Governor of the universe; he would have us re- 
member, however, that the word "God" must 
not be regarded as a term of exact knowledge, but 
as one of poetry and eloquence. It cannot con- 
vey the fully developed object of the speaker's 
consciousness; and further, since consciousness 
[259] 



Matthew Arnold 

differs at intervals and men mean different 
things by it, it is rather an elusive process to 
discover Arnold's foundation for the Deity. 
He speaks of Him again, in his favorite and 
descriptive definition, as "the enduring Power, 
not ourselves, which makes for Righteousness.'* 
He insists that the idea of God as a magnified 
and unnatural man must make way for a 
Divine Being to whom he appears to deny 
personality, and who is once more defined as 
"the stream of tendency by which all things 
fulfil the law of their being." It is unneces- 
sary to follow Arnold in all his deviations; and 
although he was perfectly serious, it is sometimes 
hard to believe him so. His strong religious 
sense was affected by the notion that religion 
can be selected and arranged at will, or to suit 
one's personal tastes and preferences, but he 
never seemed to understand the other side of 
the question — that religion is a divine authority 
and a divine revelation; a superior and reveal- 
ing gift bestowed and conditioned by a higher 
Power. Viewed in this light, it must be taken 
as offered, in strict accordance with its own 
demands. Again, Arnold failed to distinguish 
between the intolerant and effete phases of a 
passing orthodoxy and those more enlightened 
and influential schools of theological thought 
which were rapidly gaining ascendency in his 
day. Lurking under all his terms is the recur- 
rent error of arbitrary and superficial classifica- 
[260] 



Matthew Arnold 

tion, which confused men and measures, and 
treated as one those who were in many respects 
sundered as the poles. Convenient and strik- 
ing phraseology cannot successfully conceal 
these confusions; his thoughtful readers will 
detect them. The careless generalities which 
proclaim as a unity things that totally differ 
may be the delight of the vulgar, but they are 
distasteful to the cultured mind. 

In speaking of the New Testament, he would 
take no part in Renan's insinuations against 
the moral integrity of the disciples. Their 
good faith was above question and testifies for 
itself. While "miracles do not happen," and 
are an unnecessary support to religious belief, 
he admits that the majority of people have 
found them a stimulus. It is needless to argue 
against them, for the Zeitgeist is the destroyer 
of such Aberglaube, and we can afford to 
leave them to the drift of time and the widen- 
ing experiences of the race. Whenever Arnold 
wished to introduce a universal corrective, he 
turned to the Zeitgeist. His veneration for it 
was profound; for him it had an authority 
that nothing could withstand. Its masterful 
influences went beyond those of any miracle. 

The aim of his life was to make sweet reason 
and the will of God prevail in his home. He 
maintained a religious discipline, and there is 
reason to believe that daily prayer and spiritual 
meditation were his private habits. He had a 
[261] 



Matthew Arnold 

surpassing reverence and love for Jesus Christ, 
and he avers that "while Christianity makes 
for men's happiness, it does not rest upon that 
as a motive. ... It finds a far surer ground in 
believing that Christ is come from God ; in fol- 
lowing Christ, loving Christ ; and in the happi- 
ness that believing in Him and loving Him gives, 
it finds its mightiest sanction." With mellow- 
ing accent he declares that Christianity must 
survive ; and those who fancied they had done 
with it, those who had turned it aside because 
what was presented in its name was so unre- 
liable, would have to return to it again and 
to learn it better. 

Yet the works of Arnold are full of a diluted 
positivism ; and whatever may have been the 
idea of God which satisfied his personal expe- 
rience, the Deity who emerges from his philo- 
sophical speculations is too shadowy and unreal 
for strength or comfort. In fact, he was 
not so much a religious teacher as an ethi- 
cal idealist. By reducing religion to conduct, 
and by expressly denying to conduct any rela- 
tion to, or meaning for, an after-life, he makes 
religion a matter of policy.^ He saw with ap- 
palling clearness the ignorance and grossness 
which he constantly assailed, and he also real- 
ized the false position in which faith is placed 
when all the tendencies of knowledge are 
opposed to it. But he did not see the truth, 

^ W. H. Dawson's Matthew Arnold, p. 257. 
[262] 



Matthew Arnold 

or if he did he disregarded it, that a man who 
has no scientific estimation of his beHefs, and 
yet has learned the secret of conduct, has, 
according to Arnold's own reckoning, become 
the master of four-fifths of his life. 

One wishes that he could have trusted the 
plain people, and thus have laid the ghost of 
popular credulousness which always haunted 
him. He could not easily believe that not 
many learned and not many noble are chosen ; 
that the mystery and grandeur of religion 
have been concealed from the wise and the 
prudent and revealed to the simple; and yet 
in one place he conceded this against himself 
and against his own position. "Moral rules," 
he says, "apprehended as ideas first, and then 
rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, 
for the sage only. The mass of mankind has 
neither force of intellect enough to apprehend 
them clearly as ideas, nor force of character 
enough to follow them strictly as laws. . . . 
The paramount virtue of religion is, that it has 
lighted up morality ; that it has supplied the 
emotion and inspiration needful for carrying 
the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for 
carrying the ordinary man along it at all. 
Even the religions with most dross in them 
have had something of this virtue ; but the 
Christian religion manifests it with unex- 
ampled splendor." ^ The story of this achieve- 

^ Essays on Marcus Aurelius. 
[263] 



Matthew Arnold 

ment is contained in the Holy Scriptures, 
which according to Arnold are literary and not 
scientific, a record of human development 
pulsating with life and movement and not a 
storehouse for proof-texts. Morals, not meta- 
physics, are the essence of the Bible ; its words 
are fluid utterances, its one great message is 
righteousness. And once these truths are ap- 
prehended, the forcing of the Scriptures will 
cease, and the meaning of the authors will no 
longer be obscured by artificial interpretations. 

However seriously some of Arnold's fol- 
lowers have perverted his views and elevated 
beyond measure the artistic and literary senses 
in which he believed so strongly, he himself 
was thoroughly sound at heart, and his moral 
nature was of the highest. He affirms that 
chastity and charity, the two great Christian 
virtues, obtain signal testimony from experi- 
ence, and by many palpable proofs have con- 
vinced the world of their cardinal nature. The 
nations that neglect them plunge into the doom 
of ruin. "Down they go; Assyria falls, Bab- 
ylon, Greece, Rome; they all fall for want of 
conduct, righteousness ; Judea itself, the Holy 
Land, the land of God's Israel, falls too, and 
falls for want of righteousness." ^ 

It is not surprising that Arnold should have 
courted the acquaintance of such master spirits 
as Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius. He gives a 

^ Literature and Dogma, p. 353. 
[264] 



Matthew Arnold 

succinct and interesting description of the phi- 
losopher of Amsterdam, whose ejection from the 
synagogue was followed by his ostracism and 
subsequent religious independency. Spinoza 
would not be an orthodox Jew, and he 
could not become a Christian. His life, how- 
ever, was serene and devout, with frequent 
moods of religious reflection. The Old Testa- 
ment was his favorite book, and his critical 
work on it made him one of the pioneers in 
biblical criticism. His motto was, "Where 
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 
Placed by his transcendent gifts and the scorn 
of his kinsmen beyond temporary organized 
religious forms, he dwelt in an enforced yet 
welcome isolation; which won for him Arnold's 
sympathy and praise. Marcus Aurelius was 
another striking case of religious independency. 
He had a strongly ethical nature attached to 
no definitely religious creed. If Constantine 
was a baptized Pagan, Marcus Aurelius was 
an unbaptized Christian ; for his piety, though 
not classified, was sincere, and linked him to 
the Shepherd who said, "Other sheep have I, 
which are not of this fold." He was the last 
and greatest follower of Zeno ; he stripped 
Stoicism of its sterner aspects, and gave to it 
a warmth and tenderness alien to its cold and 
rigid spirit. His singularity made him accep- 
table to Arnold, who reverenced the Emperor, 
though he admitted that his system was in- 
[265 1 



Matthew Arnold 

effectual. The characteristics of Spinoza and 
Marcus AureHus were seized by Arnold for the 
consolation and help of his own unconventional 
nature. Concerning Aurelius he says: "He 
remains the especial friend and comforter of 
all clear-headed and upward-striving men, in 
those ages most especially which walk by 
sight and not by faith and yet have no open 
vision; he cannot give such souls, perhaps, 
all they yearn for, but he gives them much, 
and what he gives they can receive." ^ 

Arnold is unusually severe upon the delin- 
quencies of authors, and their intellectual 
brilliancy does not blind him to their ethical 
defects. Coleridge, he says, had no morals; 
his character inspired repugnance. Burns he 
calls a beast with splendid gleams. The laxity 
of Goethe's life is sharply condemned ; and 
Faust, though great, was marred by the fact 
that it was a drama of seduction. He regarded 
Renan's VAhhesse de Jouarre as a book entirely 
unworthy of the author. Heine, with all his 
gifts, lacked the old-fashioned, laborious, eter- 
nally needful moral deliverance, and left a 
name stained by wickedness, sensuality, and 
incessant mocking. The Life of Shelley deeply 
shocked him, and he declared, after reading 
the book, that he felt sickened forever of the 
subject of irregular relations. 

In 1883 Mr. and Mrs. Arnold visited America, 

^ Essays in Criticism, First Series, p. 378. 
[266] 



Matthew Arnold 

and were received with cordiality by his ad- 
mirers and and with characteristic hospitahty 
by the nation at large. Many were surprised 
to find him a broad-shouldered, manly English- 
man, with a face worn and wrinkled like that 
of a sea-captain, and a profile whose finely 
chiseled features betokened breeding and the 
power of command. His appearance contra- 
dicted the expectations of those who had 
prejudged it by the fastidious and feminine 
delicacy of some of his writings. Because of 
his lack of elocutionary gifts, the lectures he 
delivered were not heard by the majority of 
his audience. When printed and published, 
they became his favorite book and the one 
by which he desired to be remembered. He 
valued his American friends, but cared little 
for Americans as a people. Their life was un- 
interesting; and the mere nomenclature of the 
country acted upon a cultivated person "like 
the incessant pricking of pins." 

He came again in 1886, and returned home 
to die on April 15, 1888, of the malady which 
had struck down his father and grandfather 
and which suddenly released him from the 
responsibilities and cares of mortal life. 

It is impossible to set forth within the 
available limits of this brief survey the numer- 
ous aspects of so diversified a character and 
career as Arnold's. The place he holds as a 
[267] 



Matthew Arnold 

critic has been determined by his excellent 
canons of criticism and by the exquisite purity 
of his language. He made no pretensions to 
be a philosopher, although he had a philosophy 
of his own ; but his thought was not distin- 
guished for depth or penetration. He popular- 
ized the best French literature; he registered a 
necessary protest against treating the Bible as 
a talisman: he rebuked with skilful audacity 
the vulgarities of a commercial nation, and 
he used a few pregnant phrases, some of which 
he borrowed, to chasten his contemporaries. 
But his permanent influence will be found, if 
anywhere, in his poetry. Here, although "the 
grand moment is not his in certain command," 
he sounded depths which his prose never 
fathomed. A disciple of Wordsworth even 
more than of Goethe, Arnold takes his place 
among the Victorian singers as a poet of nature, 
of beauty, and, more than either, of doubt. 
It is doubt tinged with melancholy; he is loth 
to leave the former habitations of his spirit, 
and he looks back upon them with infinite 
desire and infinite regret.^ From these mingled 
elements are evoked his most intimate strains; 
and though he cannot speak to the popular 
heart, so long as men love intensely refined 
and classic forms, or seek a balm for their 
restless and unsatisfied yearnings, they will 
continue to read Resignation, Dover Beach, 

^ Encyclopcedia Britannica, 11th edition. Vol. IX, p. 641. 
[268] 



Matthew Arnold 

and Thyrsis. His influence upon the whole 
was an excellent one; and as the irritating 
flippancies which retarded it are rightly for- 
gotten, his truly religious nature and ethical 
earnestness will become more manifest. His 
sincerity and courage have already been men- 
tioned, and they are what we should expect 
from such a man. He lived a happy and 
useful life ; he increased the luster of an already 
honored name; and he secured a high place 
in the annals of that great literature which he 
loved and longed to benefit. 



[269] 



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BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Descent of Man. By Charles Darwin. 
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Darwin's Autobiography and Letters. D. Apple- 
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Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Edited by 
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Fifty Years of Darwinism. By various authors. 
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Collected Essays. By Professor Huxley. 
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Methods and Results. 
Darwiniana. 
Science and Education 
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Evolution and Ethics. 
Christian Theism and a Spiritual Monism. By 
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The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. By 
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The Immanence of God. By Borden P. Bowne. 
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Utilitarianism. By J, S. Mill. Longmans, 
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[277] 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Agassiz, Professor, 22 
Agnosticism, 71, 86, 130 
America and Americans, 62, 267, 

230 
Arnold, Matthew, birth, early- 
life and education, 210-211; 
university career, 213-214; 
marriage, 217; as poet and 
professor of poetry, 217-229; 
as literary and social critic, 
229-241; on contemporary 
authors, 242-243; on Puri- 
tanism and Culture, 243-246; 
on theology, 258-261; death, 
267; summary of achieve- 
ments, 268-269. 
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 209-212 
Arnold, Mrs. Thomas, 211 
Aurelius, Marcus, 264-265 

Bagehot, Walter, 92, 122, 124 
Bain, Alexander, 96, 137 
Bentham, Jeremy, 97, 101, 111- 

112, 115, 164 
Bible, The, 68, 162-163, 264 
Bowne, Borden P., 119 
Bright, John, 129 
Browning, Robert, 119 
Bushnell, Horace, 162 

Carlyle, Thomas, 50, 78, 85, 

112, 117-119, 124-125, 138 
Carpenter, Dr. Lant, 146 
Catastrophic Theory, 12-13, 23 
Chalk, Huxley's Lecture on a 
Piece of, 59 



Character, Huxley on, 62 
Christ, 74, 76, 134, 137, 262 
Civil War in Nature, 63-64 
Clifford, W. K., 170 
Cobbe, Miss Frances Power, 

153-154 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 103 
Commonsense Philosophy, 92- 

93, 114-116 
Comte, Auguste, 25, 93, 121 
Conscience, 166-167, 170; 

preaching to, 174-175 
Conte, Le, 77 
Conway, Moncure D., 150 
Cosmic process, 63-77 
Courtney, W. L., 138, 139 
Criticism, Literary, 231-238 

Darwin, Charles, birth and 
ancestry, 3-4; early life and 
education, 5-6; studies at 
Edinburgh and Cambridge, 
7-8; first interest in science, 
8; voyageof the Beagle, 9-10; 
reading of Malthus suggests 
Natural Selection, 14; con- 
current discovery of Natural 
Selection by Wallace, 15; 
Linnsean Society decides the 
issue, 17; publication of 
Origin of Species, 15, 22-23 
issues Descent of Man, 30 
chronic ill-health, 38-39 
prodigious toil, 39; religious 
life, 5, 40; loss of aesthetic 
tastes, 41; influence on his 



[281] 



Index 



generation, 42-44; death and 
tribute of Huxley, 43; burial 
in Westminster Abbey, 43- 
44; referred to, 133 
Davison, Dr. W. T., 160, 189 
Dawson, Sir William, 47 
Dawson, William H., 212. 258, 

262 
Death, by preventable disease, 

65; universal, 70 
Deism, 118 

Descent of Man, 30-31 
Direct creation, 21, 26-27 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 128 
Dreisch, Professor Hans, 172 

Education, James Mill on, 94- 
95; Huxley on, 57-58 

English people, 242 

Evolution, doctrine of, 11; 
materialistic interpretation 
of, 24-25; ethics and, 62-67; 
homocentric, 32; Theology 
and, 26-38; Theism and, 67 

Fairbairn, A. M., Professor, 71, 

133 
Fiske, John, 20, 76, 183 
Freewill, 172-173 
French Revolution, 91 
Frothingham, Rev. O. B., 157 

Genius, explosive power of, 72- 

73 
Gladstone, W. E., 3, 73, 80-81, 

129 
God, 147, 182, 190, 195, 259-260 
Grote, George, 123, 124 



Haeckel, Ernst, 70 
Harrison, Frederic, 92, 130 



Hegel, 166, 181 

Hell, present, 192 

Higginson, Rev. Edward, 146 

Hogarth, 110 

Huguenots in England, 143- 
144 

Hume, David, 92, 108, 118 

Humor, Huxley's, 83 

Huxley, Thomas H., birth and 
parentage, 49; early life and 
education, 50-51; medical 
training, 52; Rattlesnake 
cruise, 53; first contributions 
to Science, 52-53; elected 
Fellow of Royal Society, 54; 
marriage, 56; as popular 
lecturer, 58; visit to America, 
60; scope of labors, 77-78, 
as controversialist, 80-82 
not a materialist, 72, 85 
honors, 78; his agnosticism 
71; view of skepticism, 86 
death, 87; referred to 133 

Idealism, German, 118 
Ideals, 193 

Immortality, 76-77, 204-205 
Incarnation, Universal, 185-186 
Innate goodness, 161-163 
Innate ideas, 108 

Jevons, Professor Stanley, 124 
Jones, Professor Henry, 34 
Jones, Professor Wharton, 52 

Kelvin, Lord, 33 

Lansdowne, Lord, 217 
Lincoln, Abraham, 3, 243 
Liverpool Controversy, 149 
Locke, John, 92 



[282] 



Index 



London, destitution of, 51-52 

Lotze. 119, 181, 184 

Louis XIV, 143 

Lyell, Sir Charles, Darwin's 
debt to, 10; on presiding 
Mind in Evolution, 29; re- 
ferred to, 39, 47, 153 

Madge, Rev. Thomas, 146 
Maine, Sir Henry, 222 
Malthus, 14-15 
Marmontel, 103 
Marsh, Professor O. C, 60 
Martineau, Gaston, 143 
Martineau, Harriet, 145 
Martineau, James, ancestry and 
birth, 143-145; early life and 
education, 145-146; divinity 
student at York, 147; Dub- 
lin and Liverpool pastorates, 
148-149; studies in Germany 
150-151; academic life in 
London, 151-155; death, 
159; as a preacher, 152-154, 
198-199; honored, 154-155; 
literary style of, 159-161; 
ethical teaching of, 161-178; 
on philosophy of religion, 
181-205; on biblical criti- 
cism, 188-189 
Metaphysical Society, 155 
Mill, James, 93, 95, 115, 130, 169 
Mill, John Stuart, parentage 
and birth, 93-94; educated 
by his father, 95-98; visit to 
France, 99; conversion, 100; 
first literary efiPorts, 101; 
disillusionment, 102; inti- 
macy with Mrs. Taylor, 104- 
105; death at Avignon, 107; 
his philosophy and ethics 



discussed, 108-119; political 
economy, 120-123; influences 
that shaped his thought, 92, 
93, 99, 121; Logic, 123-124; 
social and religious teaching, 
124-139; Parliamentary ca- 
reer, 128 

Milton, John, 21-22, 175, 235- 
236 

Mivart, St. George, 58, 79, 84 

Morality, Science and, 67; in- 
ternal, 168-170 

Morley, Lord, 106-107, 133 

Nantes, Edict of, 143 
Natural Selection, 18, 47 
Nature, cruelty of, 131-132 
Necessitarianism, 109 
Newman, F. W., 150 
Newman, John Henry, 52, 71, 

213 
Nicoll, Sir WilUam Robertson, 

106 
Nietzsche, 26 



Owen, Sir Richard, 47, 80 
Oxford, Arnold's tribute 
214, 215 



to. 



Paley, 92 

Pattison, Professor, 202 

PhiHstinism, 249, 251 

Philosophy, ancient and modem 
contrasted, 164-165 

Pierre, William, 143 

Poetry, function of, 220; ro- 
manticism in, 221; quota- 
tions from Arnold's, 212, 
218; 224-226, 228, 240; 
Arnold's verse and the spirit 
of the age, 221-225, 227 



[283] 



Index 



Priestley, Joseph, Dr., 186 
Puritanism, 92, 224-249 

Qualitative Calculus, 111-114 

Radicalism and mob law, 128 
Rattlesnake, voyage of, 52- 

53 
Religion, science and, 68-77; 

morality and, 263 
Righteousness, 247, 260-264 
Romanes Lecture, Huxley's, 

62, 77 
Romanism and Protestantism, 

255-256 

Sacrifice, personal, 161, 176 
Saint Simon, 121 
Saintsbury, Professor, 242 
Scale of Moral Excellence, 173- 

174 
Schleiermacher, 200 
Self-realization, 113-114 
Sheldon, Professor, 110 
Shrewsbury, description of, 3-5 
Skepticism, 73-74, 86 
Social Problem, the, 126, 128 
Social sanction, 170-172 
Social Science, 126 
Species, Darwin's Origin of, 

15, 48; exposition of, 18-20; 

Arnold on, 12; Wallace on, 

17-18; Huxley on, 48 
Spencer, Herbert, 109, 119, 168, 

170 
Spinoza, 265 
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 109, 113, 

131, 167-168, 170 



St. Francis, 237-238 
Struggle for Ufe, 63-64' 
Superman, Nietzsche's doctrine 
of, 26 

Taylor, Miss, 105, 106 
Taylor, Mrs., 104-105, 126 
Tennyson, Lord, 3, 87, 133, 138, 

243 
Theism, Mill's, 132-134; Mar- 

tineau's, 198, 201, 204 
Tractarian Movement, 213 
Turner, Rev. Henry, 146 
TyndaU, Professor, 34, 78 
T:yTeU, Professor R. Y., 218 

Uniformitarians, 13 
Unitarianism, tendency of, 196, 

203 
Utilitarian Society, lOO-lOl 
Utilitarianism, 108, 114-117; 

ethics of, 164 
Utility of ReUgion, 133 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, at 
Temate, 15; on Darwin's 
Origin of Species, 17-18; on 
the origin of man, 31; re- 
ferred to, 39 

Watldnson, W. L., 247 

Weismann, 30 

Wesley, John, 145-146 

Wilberforce, Bishop, 80 

Wm, the, 109 

Wordsworth, William, 91, 103, 
118, 211, 223 

Zeitgeist, the, 261 



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